


Flight of the Sinners

by nowsaguaro



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail Hobbs Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, Fights, First Kiss, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowsaguaro/pseuds/nowsaguaro
Summary: Will, Hannibal, and Abigail leave together during Mizumono. They follow a plan set in place to make it to Europe - laying low (lol) at their first stop: Galway.Slow-ish build ~
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 105
Kudos: 264





	1. Thurgood/Marshall International Airport

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only chapter that has story-telling this rapid okeee

*

*

*

Will has a sick thought the moment he hears his voice on the other end: _[Make no mistake. He is a savage, but I am the rabid one.]_

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


“We can still leave.”

They both know they can run in a circle of ‘ _how can I trust you’_ or they can both swallow down the other poisons they’re choking on. A louder thought runs in their minds. Much louder: _[If you go, I will find you again or I will die.]_

Hannibal looks to Abigail, who wordlessly, though trembling, turns on her feet to run up the stairs. Passing by a chilling pile of abandoned knives, leaving a footprint trail in a mud of rain and blood.

Will is covered in the rain; Hannibal in sweat and fighting. Both dirty with tears. They’d like to answer questions, but for now the other visceral certainty flickers back and forth across a stinging line of heartache, of confusion.

All three of their hearts are pounding so quick it’s lost the all human dull thudding and has become a needling against their lungs and in their ears.

Hannibal and Will follow Abigail upstairs and down the hall to a guest bedroom.

_[Her bedroom.]_

“We will leave tonight,” Hannibal says to the both of them.

Hannibal and Abigail operate fluidly around each other, grabbing two duffel bags and a tied green file folder. Hannibal removes his shirt and beckons Will to the bathroom, where he hands him a bath towel to dry off. Hannibal examines his own wounds, pads his cheeks and nose to check for facial fractures, and blots at the blood on his face. Will, who is still in a confused but rapid daze, tries to meet the processing pace of the other two, removing his shirt and drying his hair.

Hannibal grunts down, seeming to become energized but increasingly cold. The surgeon. “I have shirts in your size in our bag, but for travel, you may wear an exercise shirt of mine. The drawers of my bedroom down the hall. It should be comfortable.”

Will nods quickly, gaining breath and settling into sharper focus now after being given a task.

_[Where are we going? Where are we going?]_

He comes back out, pulling down a gray t-shirt. It sticks to his still rain-soaked skin. “There is a warrant out for our arrest. They would have frozen all of our identification.”

Hannibal buttons his own fresh shirt. “Professor Will Graham and Dr. Hannibal Lecter will not be able to leave the country. The Arco family still can. If we move quickly.”

Abigail hands Will the folder she was holding and he pulls out three blue US passports, flipping through them quickly to memorize their identities.

He mumbles. “Simon Arco age 41 birthplace St. Louis. Ralfs Arco age 49 birthplace Ventspils, Latvia. Darcy Arco age 19 birthplace St. Louis.”

Hannibal adds, “I’m afraid with your small entrapment operation – just a power duo was it?– my face still has not earned the fame to be advertised around the country. Only my name would flag the TSA system.” He moves back to the mirror, speaking over his shoulder. “So hard to make it in Hollywood.”

_[It’s not exactly the buddy comedy you’re making it out to be.]_

Eyeing Will’s glare in the mirror, Hannibal adds, “perhaps we will revisit the subject.”

While Abigail heaves both duffels into the hallway and Hannibal attempts to sort his hair, Will continues to sift through the folder.

“Three tickets to ‘Galway, County Galway, Republic of Ireland’…?”

Abigail straightens her coat, ready to leave and patiently waiting for the other two. “Mostly my idea. There are schools nearby and plenty of people rent out their apartments while they’re away for the year. We needed a safe fly-in city to lay low for a while.”

Will doesn’t look up. “These are dated for a week ago.”

Hannibal, donning a fresh coat from his hall closet, joins the conversation again. “I had a bit of a different plan, I must say. The flat is already rented for us and waiting. We will buy new tickets at the airport tonight.”

  
  


When they get to the first floor, they’re careful not to set the bags down. Their contaminated shoes are an unfortunate inevitability, but the rain and mud from their walk will do its best to hide evidence.

The doctor manages to arrive at a cool and calm matter-of-factness that is completely incongruent to the others’ moods. “Leave your phone, Will. We will walk two streets over to hail a taxi. We will not talk about tonight or the future in the car on the way and we will not use our names, even our aliases. I will offer cash. Once at the departures, I will purchase new tickets and we will take whatever gets us out within the next few hours.”

He pulls a small box from the coat’s buttoned breast pocket and slips a band onto his own finger, followed by Will’s, quickly, coldly, abruptly. They both try not to look down at their hands.

They depart through the side door to not pass Alana.

Abigail winces when it is mentioned and then flicks her head to Will. “What about your dogs?”

Will adjusts his bag and keeps his eyes on the pavement, trying to ground himself despite the surreality of the night. “I fed them before I left. Asked my neighbor to see to them tomorrow. He’d, uh, he called about the blue and red lights.” He manages a look in her direction while she nods silently. “There’s a warrant out for me, too.”

When they finally find a yellow taxi – it’s always harder in the rain – they balance their conversation into a calm, “how was your day?” to avoid the inevitable descent into a bizarre quiet.

Abigail is the only one of the three who isn’t feeling lost in thought. She’s a little relieved after the palpable growing tension in the house this week.

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


“Sorry, sir, we do not have daily flights to Galway, but we do have a red-eye tonight that leaves for Dublin. Only half-booked. They will have connecting flights upon your arrival or, should you like, Galway is accessible by train and car. It’s a small country,” she laughs through a tired customer service voice.

_[Long day for everyone I guess.]_

Hannibal passes back a rolling charm. “No matter, we will take a train when we arrive. Just the three one-way seats to Dublin, thank you.”

“I think I might find three in a row by a window! If we were at Dulles, I’m sure I wouldn’t find three seats on the same flight.”

“Lucky we came to Thurgood/Marshall, then,” he laughs.

Will can tell Hannibal is letting a genuine sigh of relief escape into the performed conversation. He shudders at the thought of taking a taxi into D.C. at this hour, just to find out they can’t get out tonight. _[But Dr. Lecter always has a plan, doesn’t he?]_ A hot bitterness creeps over his shoulders and up around his neck.

  
  


Hannibal ushers them toward their terminal but doesn’t make much eye contact.

“We are on the 9:20 flight to Dublin tonight. It will take seven and a half hours to set down and they are five hours ahead, so we’ll arrive before noon, their time.”

Abigail senses a little volatility in the collective mood and tries to break through the tension with offered banal conversation. “I hope the storm doesn’t delay the plane or anything. That’d be unlucky.”

He stiffly turns to her, acknowledging her efforts. “Yes, quite.”

  
  


Will spends the majority of the waiting time talking to Abigail.

He has endless questions, most of which can be answered in public. _How have you been? How did you finish your GED? Were you bored? What do you do for fun? Were you lonely? Are you excited?_

Many other questions could not be asked yet. Not around company. Or ever. _Does he threaten you? How’s your hearing? Do you kill? Will you feel safe with him? With me?_

  
  


He manages to get solid answers to just a few questions before a quiet hangs down among the group. They decide to spend the final moments before boarding trying to make themselves appear less chaotic and disheveled in the bathroom.

Will and Hannibal don’t speak much.

\------*------

  
  


The flight departs on time.

  
  
  
  


Abigail falls asleep against the window just moments after takeoff, leaving an even more tense quiet between the pair.

In the center seat (Hannibal took the aisle seat as a protective measure more than courtesy), Will leans his elbow on the arm rest to support his head. He can feel his heartbeat where his knuckle meets his temple. The stars shake in his vision in a rhythm along with the beat. _[I am tired. I am disturbed by very few thoughts.]_

He focuses on the feel of the hard ring against his skin and fidgets with the weight of the snug black band around his finger. It’s elegant in a way that is… him. There’s a slim line of wood that runs through the center. It's a strange thing. He looks over at Hannibal’s. It has the same black with two small metal lines in place of the wood inlay.

Will allows his first real submission to the situation and to Hannibal as a travel companion. “The ring is nice. You picked them out for us.”

“Yes I did. It is–” Hannibal looks down at his own and rotates it with his thumb. “– it is not haphazard or by accident that you are here with us right now.”

Something dreadful and hopeful and shameful stirs in Will’s stomach. A fact of the other man and a fact of himself that he had tucked back and let blur in his periphery for some time. _[Not to be dug up now. Yet. Or ever. Or yet.]_ “I’m not ready to find any gratitude for all of this.” He looks at Hannibal and then down at their hands. “But, I am looking forward to the home you’ve made for us.”

He smiles in response and glances out the window for a moment over Abigail’s sleeping head. “Black zirconium.” At Will’s questioning stare, he supplements, “the ring. It’s black zirconium.”

Will is not quite sure how to look at a ring. He tries not to flex out his hand to admire it as if it were a gift. _[It’s not really mine.]_ “And the wood?”

“The inlay on yours is maple.” He twists his own ring now with his other hand. “I thought the rose gold for myself. We can find more suitable ones. Or, you don’t have to wear it. I quite like it, but I admit rose gold is not something I am completely aligned with. Abigail likes it.” He almost chuckles. “She wanted a ring as well but I assured her it’s more of a precaution than a family crest.”

“Zircon was at one point believed to treat liver disease.” Will flinches and quirks his head, smiling for the first time. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m a little wrecked.”

“I hate to disappoint, but I chose this because I believed it would look nice. Not for its liver preserving properties.” The taller man allows himself a glint of happiness as well.

“Sometimes aesthetics win out over significance. That’s okay.” Will puts his other hand over his ring. “And the maple? Looked nice?”

Hannibal moves his jaw side to side. “It reminded me of you. I don’t particularly like wood with stones or granite, but for you I made an exception.”

_[There is the stir again.]_

“It’s nice.”

“So you said.” He finally smiles at Will, while actively re-potting some of the trust so violently unearthed. “Get some sleep. If you can.”

Will nods a few too many times, combing both of his hands back through his nearly dry hair, and tries to picture how a mummy might rest upright in a confined space.


	2. Arrivals

The walk from the train station to their apartment is short and in the bright afternoon, only interrupted by a stop into the corner store. They pass by long rows of trimmed hedges and a hospital, giving a sterile feel to an otherwise very old sea town. 

The apartment is on the top story of a three story walk up - a pale building with peach lines under the roof and running down the sides. It’s rather old and a little ugly, saved only by the bright green vines that run up the concrete siding.

The walls of the apartment itself, even its wainscoting, are painted sloppily in a kind of foul violet. The kitchen sits right in front of the door, halving a long hallway that connects the two bedrooms. There is a bulky circular pine table and four chairs of the same wood, which take up most of the room’s black and white tile floor. The cabinets are painted in a white reminiscent of doctor’s offices. The paint jobs are so clumsy that, if they weren’t in a shared building, he’d believe the usual tenants did it all themselves. And were chimpanzees. It’s unrefined to say the least. 

Will didn’t ever have a home like this growing up, but it sends him reminiscing anyway. Maybe it’s the apartment’s smell, all must and wood and attempts at maturity.

The two bedrooms are fairly identical, both white with central queen-sized beds and their own bathroom. Abigail, who peers into every door with the final burst of manic energy of someone exhausted, takes the room to the right of the kitchen with the unattached bath, a courtesy to the pair who will have to share a bathroom. 

A small piece of paper lays on the kitchen table, detailing the tenant’s contact information and some local recommendations. Hannibal reads half of it before he sets down the bag of produce and eggs.

  
  


He looks over to Will, who is the only one still frozen in the doorway. “If you’d like to shower first, I can continue to put away our food.”

Will looks down at himself, his hand clasped tight around the duffel. “Thank you, yes, I still smell damp.”

“It’s quite alright, the scent is being spoken over by the addition of airplane plastic.”

_[Thank God he’s feeling quippy; sterile kindness was going to swallow us all whole.]_

  
  
  


In the bedroom, he sheds his clothes that smell of plane travel and old rain. Nothing feels real yet, not the colliding brands of social coldness, not the smells on the street, not the whirlwind night before. Whatever acidic animal he’s let make a home in his chest is not clawing its way out now but it is making an effort to not be ignored. It might take a few days of restful stagnation and Irish rain to ground him in his new reality. Irrevocable reality. The bones of which cannot be rearranged no matter the city.

Will gives himself a mantra he spits in his head. _[There was no scenario from the night before in which my life stayed as it was. All three of us are breathing and safe for now.]_

Seeing Abigail was not the grand relief it should have been. He’d done the hardest bits of the mourning process already and there is an irrational feeling of betrayal he’d unintentionally directed at her as well. _[But she’s just a girl. I, too, was a marionette of the doctor. I, too, am here despite it all.]_

  
  


Will finds it strange to see a small window above the shower’s edge. The soaps and shampoos sit on its tile sill. The window has fogged glass, painted with the silhouette of a few leaves from the tree outside. For some reason, he reaches up to open it, letting the water run on his back while he watches the sky for a moment. It’s only the afternoon, but it feels like it’s night. The moon already is in the sky, waiting patiently as well. It looks very much like a rock like that, rather than the nightlight it becomes. He takes his time lathering his hair with the lemongrass and lavender bath collection – a university man’s effort for upscale guest treatment. Still light-years passed the perfumed bars at motels. Will scrubs a little harder than he might have at home, leaving his skin red and smelling only of the soaps – a small cling for tunnel vision.

  
  


\------*------

  
  


“I already changed into the pajamas you brought.” He indicates by pinching the loose shirt. “I’m not sure these were for me.”

Hannibal looks up and then back down at the cloth shopping bag he’s folding. “It’s all for you.” He swallows in a way that makes it look difficult. “I mean to say, you are not a guest.”

“I will take this opportunity to wash up as well. Please eat something.” 

Hannibal’s temperament bridges Will back into the night before despite all the chill of his clean skin and fresh clothes. The shower might as well have been Baltimore rain.

Will takes his place in the kitchen and pulls three glasses from the cabinets to set on the table, filling one with tap water. It runs clear and warm.

Abigail’s footsteps creak quietly while she makes her way to the kitchen and fills a glass in the sink as well.

It’s almost awkward, if shared surreality and trauma can be described in such a small way. Overly comfortable too quickly. Under-explained but immediately understood. Nothing more to understand, really.

“I guess the water tastes different everywhere,” Abigail offers. _[Not like pipes]._

“Hard to miss the water of the Rust Belt.”

There is a beat too long of silence while they sip.

She breaks it again. Rather talented socially. She shares that with Hannibal. “He doesn’t know how to love me, I think. He knows how to _protect_ someone. Expert at it, really. Maybe he thinks that's what love is… mentorship.”

Will scoffs.

She continues, “that’s mostly what it was. It’s hard not to feel safe beside him. With him, I don’t have to be unseen. It’s like I have no shadows at all. Like I’m on the sun.”

He hums at the thought. _[She’s allowed her perceptions. Even if he isn’t the Catholic confession booth she’s made him out to be.]_ “You are a very smart girl, Abigail.”

She smiles and, not knowing what to say, looks down at her glass. “I’m glad you could come with us. I think, um, he was getting nervous.”

Will leans his head back and bites out, “the beast gets restless.”

“Or self-conscious.” She laughs at Will, both of them recognizing how ridiculous (and probably true) that is. “He has abandonment issues.” Something in his face must flicker, because Abigail tacks on an explanation to such a simple analysis of a complicated man. “I read a lot.”

“We have that in common.”

They both marinate in thoughts, flipping mentally through the behavior of a man, too smart and too lonely. 

When a knob squeak interrupts their increasingly comfortable silence and the sound of the shower stops, Abigail smacks the counter and pivots. “I think I am going to go sleep for five days. I will see you later.”

She’s off.

  
  


\------*------

  
  


Will walks back to the bedroom to find Hannibal in just pajama bottoms while he shuffles through the duffel to hang their shirts.

Hannibal doesn’t look over his shoulder before he speaks. “I do hope these university students have an ironing board.”

Will crawls into bed and tries to quickly fumble for safer brain re-connections for all the crossing, frayed wires telling him to consummate their journey. 

It helps when Hannibal puts on a loose and big-buttoned pajama shirt. “How is our girl?”

“Could you hear us talking?”

“Don’t concern yourself, I couldn’t distinguish the words.”

Will tilts his head condescendingly. “But you tried to. You’re not one for mental privacy.”

“No, I am not.”

  
  


Hannibal, not looking particularly in need of a nap, crawls into bed as well. “What do you want?”

Will crinkles his eyebrows. He’s so confused and angered by the sudden frankness of the question that he starts shivering into a disbelieving laughter. With the added exhaustion, the manic huffs tumble quickly into shaking, gasping tears. “I want to find some way to have never met you.” He nearly slams the heels of his palms into his eyes and lays back into the pillow.

Hannibal is momentarily hurt, comforted by the fact that there is a much stronger counter current for Will, the one that brought him here. “Is that what you want?”

Will removes his hands and turns his head to Hannibal, who is fussing with the sheets. “It’s _one_ of the things I want.”

Hannibal thinks for a moment and finishes climbing into bed. “What else? What keeps you?”

“I – you’re my friend. I couldn’t put you away.”

“That’s the reason that you told me to run. But why did you run with me, Will?”

He can’t say: _[I am the buried person who worships the storm that unearthed him.]_ Tears start falling from his shaking, and he realizes he’d forgotten how much it prickles when they finally roll down the face. _[Never been much for crying.]_ “I don’t want to be where… you aren’t.”

Hannibal unsuccessfully suppresses a smile. “You don’t have to be.”

While he huffs out a little relief, Will notices how emotionally and physically drained he is. “Can we talk tomorrow?”

“We can always talk. I like our conversations,” Hannibal practically whispers.

“I’m not going to sleep, I just…” He trails off. 

“Yes.” Hannibal waits a moment and, with an oddly unsure voice, adds, “if it is worth anything at all, and if I had the choice, I’d like to meet you again and again.”

Will rolls his eyes. “See if something different happened each time.”

“Perhaps to see what you would have done to me if you were without a cage.”

Will gazes back for a long time. When the other man makes no indication that he will be the first to look away, Will flips on his left shoulder to stare over at the wall.

Hannibal speaks again. “If the thought excites you, if it lets the mind run wild, perhaps you are not quite the Francis of Assisi you’d hoped you were.”

Will says nothing and slams his eyes shut, willing away Hannibal as he would an imaginary friend.

Tomorrow he will leave to get space. For now, he will hang it between them like a curtain from the ceiling.

Afternoon light cracks through the drawn blinds.

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


Will wakes up staring at the darkened ceiling, laying next to a sprawling and empty, rigidly tucked side of the bed. He’s not sure he’s ever seen someone make half a bed. It’s a cold feeling and he cannot say why. He’d grown accustomed to waking up in a bed that feels sad and storied like a grave. This is just a bed in a bedroom. Lonely where it doesn’t need to be.

There is a partially audible but whispered conversation vibrating through the hall and under the door.

_[I’m in Ireland. Abigail is alive. There is a warrant out for my arrest. I can never see my dogs again. If I wasn't here, I'd be in jail. Everything is different. I am not alone and everything is different.]_

The room smells like lavender and two different men.

Will walks over to the bathroom, possibly to check if he recognizes himself. He’s disappointed when he does. He looks how he did every night this week. Just now with the addition of bed rest.

“Ah, here he comes, gently from his kingdom.” Hannibal, mug in hand, turns toward Will from where the pair stands at the sink.

“Good… evening. What time is it?”

“10. You slept a _lot._ ” Abigail laughs. “Sorry if we woke you, I was starving.”

Hannibal nods at Will. “Yes, hopefully you can sleep again before morning.”

He considers for a moment, not wanting to go back to the bedroom and sit alone in the dark, but not wanting to be completely contrarian so soon. “Maybe I will stay up with whoever is staying up.”

“Then let’s all stay up!” Abigail takes a seat at the table and Hannibal finishes drying the last of the dishes.

After getting only an hour nap in, Hannibal looks a little weary at the thought of staying up through the jet lag, but he sips his tea and joins them at the table.

Will and Abigail spend the next few hours listing the places they’d like to see while they’re in Ireland, revisiting moments on the train, and poking fun at Hannibal. There’s a visceral thrill that comes from mocking a monster. Though, with him this exhausted, the thrill comes closer to ringing a doorbell and running away. Bizarrely, Hannibal’s smirking welcome for the jabs allows the first real healing moments Will has had in a long time. The three spend a lot of time laughing at things that aren’t so funny. Everyone is performing as best they can. A dinner-less family dinner scene with all the authentic warmth of the tile floor it’s placed on. But it feels nice. At the heart of it, it is genuine, just a little desperate. Begging for some glue to dry while they hold together the heavy pieces.

  
  


Of course, none of them make it to sunrise.

  
  


Will lies awake for a moment after saying goodnight to Abigail and stares toward the ceiling. He and her have a lot in common. If asked what, he’d say books, poor beginnings, rural leanings. Maybe he’d mumble something about enduring Hannibal’s manipulations. _[Who knows if Abigail is captivated by violence in the same way as Hannibal. Or haunted by it enough to want to now do some haunting. She’s earned it.]_ He catches his own thoughts. _[Earning implies decadence. If she ‘earns’ blood as her gift for a horrible few years, what do I earn as my reward for pain? What pain earns this? What can be forgiven?]_

  
  


He turns his head to face Hannibal, already asleep. 

This man, like any other, can be killed with a bullet. His blood is not more resilient when spilling, his breath not more contained when sleeping.

The thoughts have an unexpected meditative effect on Will, and he falls asleep thinking them.


	3. Water Cycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will makes a friend.

Will wakes up to bright voices in the kitchen. _[Figures that they have synchronized schedules. And both responsibly adjust to time differences.]_

He changes into jeans and a gray button down and pads toward the kitchen, trying not to interrupt Abigail, who seems to be reading something.

“–and the parties left bleeding after the Lecter vanishing act have declined to make a statement. Suspicious? Or just a royal, or should I say, _federal_ embarrassment? Our favorite deranged consultant Will Graham is at large and likely in tow. Perhaps the most scandalous elopement Baltimore has ever seen.” She grimaces over a little flash of excitement, looking up from a new, sleek phone.

Will stands in the doorway, managing to wring out the smallest grain of humor from the allegations, though he wishes the ‘Lecter vanishing act’ was off the books entirely. A difficult request, given the blood trail and involvement of their peers who are, thankfully _[?]_ , alive to tell the tale. Will doesn’t have to see the article to know it’s from Tattlecrime and likely flooded with intrusive medical information and pictures from the kitchen scene. He’s surprised he hadn’t even given Jack a thought until now. Not a single glance in his mind toward the life or death status of his former colleague, who he last saw only in the form of puddles.

_[What does that say about me?]_

Hannibal and Abigail are looking back at him from the kitchen table, two coffee mugs in front of them, both with illegible but certainly amused expressions. 

Hannibal looks over his shoulder to Will and offers to serve him from the large, fluffy plate of scrambled eggs marbled with spinach.

“It smells nice, I’m just going to go for a walk. Can I have a key?”

“Only if you come back.” Abigail quips, pulling the spare key from the dish by the refrigerator.

“You should take this as well.” Hannibal slides a new smartphone from the pair he’d been programming alongside one another.

  
  


\------*------

  
  


Will walks in a long, roundabout path through the blocks that separate him from the grass park bordering the beach in an effort to kill time and work up hunger.

The air in the park all but vibrates with salty mist like a frigid static. It’s calm in the only way cold can be calm. The entire town is overtaken by its proximity to the ocean. No tall buildings to stand in the way of the breeze. Just wood and stone that holds all the wet. Yet another shore that, like him, is mistaken for sleeping.

  
  


Will struggles to find an empty bench and resigns to sit next to a small and slender woman with deep skin and an elegant black ponytail. Reading. _[Maybe I have that warm severity when I’m thinking. Though, I guess I’m not warm.]_

As soon as he sits and begins to flip through the book he’d hurriedly pulled from the shelves in the bedroom, a calm, chilled drizzle takes over the people at the park. No one flinches at rain in Ireland.

  
  


“El diablo se está casando.” The woman beside him says it with a gentle smile and matter-of-factness, taking a second to hold his gaze before he flicks his eyes away again.

She says it very quickly. _[Likely an idiom or else she wouldn’t have used it as an icebreaker. I don’t know you, there was reasonable ice. Or don’t they do ice here.]_ “Sorry?” 

She chuckles. “Sorry, I took you for a Spaniard.” She points down at his book.

He looks down. In lieu of a title, it reads _Federíco Garcia Lorca_ in golden embossed font. “It’s, uh, his complete works in English.”

She continues on. “Well, the saying. It means… ‘the devil’s getting married.’” She repeats.

 _“Sorry?_ ” Will shuffles through a variety of absurd thoughts, a part of him wondering if this was an undercover reporter’s patronizing accusation. _[That makes no sense.]_ He’s much more accustomed to the sharp stare of Freddie’s self-assured and dangerous shamelessness.

“Son’thing we say. It’s a rainstorm while the sun is out,” she offers with the smirk of someone who knows they’re smart. And charming. It reminds him a little of Beverly.

He smiles. Somehow it comes nearly organically. “It fits. Uh, what is your name? Cómo te llamas?”

“Griega.”

He recognizes the name meaning ‘Greek.’

“W–My name is Simon.”

“Nice to meetchu, Simon. Oi, my shift is about to start. I’m a bartender at a pub down the way. The Realist, if you ever want to come by.”

He nods once, opening his book again now that drizzle stopped.

“Or you could just walk with me. Lunch menu.” She rises to standing and throws her backpack on. “If you can’t come now, I’m also there all the fun nights.”

  
  


She really is beautiful. _Very_ beautiful. She looks at him in a pointed but comfortable _[… not flirtatious… communicative… knowing?]_ way.

  
  
  


_[Gay. She’s gay and thinks I’m gay.]_

  
  


He offers a tight-lipped smile and an unenthusiastic nod toward what was probably more than a simple suspicion on her part. _[Maybe running away with another man gives off an energy. I guess there are things you can glean only from eyes after all… I am also wearing a wood and black stone wedding band. Ah. Occam’s Razor again wins out over the poetics of social analysis.]_

  
  


He rises to standing and follows, too.

  
  
  
  
  


The pub is dark, cavernous, and quiet. There isn’t even music playing and the only light at this time of day is shining from the windows by the door, barely reaching the seating area beyond the bar.

He sits down on the stool at the end and waits while she clocks in and gets settled.

Griega speaks while not looking up from where she’s opening a new package of stirrers. “Tourist, business, or transplant?”

“Uh, staying a while before moving again, I guess. So, are you from Spain?”

She goes wide-eyed. “Nooo, I moved here from Venezuela for university. Never left. Don’t ask me how long ago that was - I’m older than I look.”

“So am I.” He drums his fingers a little nervously. _[Out of practice.]_

“Do you sit out there a lot? At the park by the beach?”

“Every day that I work, yes.” Griega ties her apron with a large loop around her waist. “I read, mostly. Some days if I’m feeling particularly existential, I think about the water. How much of the water has fallen on me already like rain.” She speaks in the poetics of someone well read on the classics and modern literature. _[Familiar.]_

“That’s an interesting thought,” he hums, not quite knowing how to reply.

“If I look at the ocean, how much of the water have I seen before? I don’t know if that stuff is measurable, but I just like to think.” She shrugs and starts to test the taps.

“The same with people, I guess.”

She looks up, not expecting to actually receive a continued conversation. “Huh, how do you mean?”

“How much of them is made up of us? How much of us is made up of them?”

“Another immeasurable thing I guess.”

“Runs together like water does.” He smiles.

“Goes and comes back like water does.”

Griega flicks a thumb over her shoulder toward the list of items on the wall. Simple and short.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Uh, French onion soup. Please, thank you.” He clasps his hands together and intertwines his fingers. If he wanted to ‘act natural’, he was failing.

It’s so dead at this time of day that she walks back into the kitchen with the order rather than typing it into the computer at the bar and doesn’t come back out while the soup is being prepared, which provides a little social relief for him.

  
  


When she finally does return, it is with a steaming and very cheese-covered cauldron style bowl. It looks and smells delicious; he tries to remember the last time he ate. So long, dog food might look delicious.

While she grabs him a spoon and fork, she revives their conversation. “So, have you read Lorca yet or did I interrupt your beginnings?”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, I don’t remember the name of the poem, but there’s one where he speaks of being born among mirrors.” Griega emphatically dries the soup’s humidity from her hands with the towel by the sink. “He doesn’t want to see himself. Not even his shadow. It reminds me of what you said a bit – wondering what of other people was really you and what of you is really them. It’s not so bad, mirrors and shadows, right? It seems rather silly in the poem to not want to see himself. Do you not want to see yourself?” She gives him a playful smile.

_[She means I’m handsome. Not that I’m wicked.]_

“At some point we all borrow enough from each other it becomes blurring I think.”

They both laugh.

“Yes! I am really glad you sat down at my bench today, Simon. Maybe we’ll blur, too.” 

  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


Will shucks his shoes and tucks them neatly in the row of his and Abigail’s they'd made by the door. A compromise between Hannibal’s neurotic cleanliness and Will’s neurotic grasp for outdoor routine.

He looks up to see Abigail on her phone at the table. “What’ve you been up to all day?”

She looks up at him, a little surprised to see him actually initiate a conversation. “Walked around a bit. I saw the campus, which was cool. It’s weird being around so many people my age. I just sat watching them like zoo animals. It’s been a while.”

He sits at the table with her and huffs. “I imagine. So how is it? Were you looking just out of curiosity?”

“Well, I know it’s only been a few days but I like it here and, y’know, gotta start applying soon. I wouldn’t mind it.”

“Wow. It’s-” He stops.

“All happening so fast?” She supplies with a little laugh.

“I was going to say it’s like we picked up where we let off, but it felt a little strange to say.” Will chews his lip before deciding it’s okay to offer a smile. “Bringing up ‘where we left off’ feels taboo in this house.”

“I get the feeling everything is allowed to be said,” she smiles back with zero certainty. Her particular brand of intelligent hopelessness.

They think: _[I really don’t want to, though.]_ Looking to the future is the only habitable reality. If they didn’t live with a psychiatrist, they might be perfectly content to enable the other’s repression. But, unfortunately and fortunately, they live with someone who drips with expertise, knacks, and affinities.

He looks up from accidentally trying to read her phone upside down. She hadn’t noticed. “So… talk to any of them? The zoo animals?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


For the third day in a row, Will finds himself on a morning walk, this time before 8. He makes his way to the familiar shingle beach that he stumbled upon two days earlier, finding the pathway through the cairn that fences out the surrounding park.

There is a hush among a small huddle of gulls and guillemots on the rock pier. A strange camaraderie. A strange quiet.

Like clockwork, it starts to rain. Rain feels solemn, but there can’t be tragedy in whatever cleans the earth and cools the air. He closes his eyes and puts his hands in his pockets. And wonders how recently this rain was ocean.

The sound of pushed aside stones and shuffling sand approaches and he opens his eyes again to find Hannibal beside him.

“What brings you here?”

Hannibal looks out at the water. “I wanted to see what you do everyday.”

“Well, you’re looking at it.”

“It’s lovely.”

  
  


Will looks at him for a quick second, then closes his eyes again. “Keeping an eye on me?”

“I enjoy your company.” Hannibal holds his breath and feels guilted to speak again. “I only wish to protect you.”

“I’m not sure I’m in the right hands for that, Hannibal. If I am left to my own devices, I’m allegedly the one to be afraid of, if I’m fragile and left to you, I boil alive. You should decide on an angle if you’re appealing to me on grounds of protection.”

“You are nowhere near fragile. And you’re not a coward, Will.” He moves up closer to him. “I just believe you are in danger of punishing yourself for what you desire.”

Will decides to look at him again. “And what is it I desire?”

“To be seen. To perform righteousness. To sleep through the night.” Hannibal raises his eyebrow. 

“The most righteous act I can think of would be to kill you.” Will grinds the words out of his teeth.

“Is that what you want?” Hannibal’s mouth quirks skeptically but not tauntingly. He pivots on his feet toward him while Will makes it clear he won’t answer. “Who would be the second most righteous murder? Yourself? Or, if we are simply weighing body count, Abigail?” Now he is taunting.

“No. I’m not going to kill us all, if that’s what you’re pulling for.”

“Your avoidance of the more objective path of justice tells me that perhaps you’re not searching for righteousness. Perhaps you are in a desperate grab for justification after the fact.” Hannibal places a heavy hand on the back of Will’s neck.

“Justification for death.” Will doesn’t move.

“Justification for how much you delight in playing executioner.”

“Delight implies a level of whimsy I don’t think I’m capable of. That is probably your thing. That’s the artist in you, I guess.” He quips, letting the bitter sounds crack through.

“Okay. I will be more specific.” Hannibal turns to face him fully and speaks into the top of his head as though he could possibly say something to make the subject more immoral and private. “It makes you feel good.”

The words hum in the shorter man’s hair as they’re spoken.

  
  


They stay there for a lost amount of time. The shore is more calm than the shores in Delaware and Virginia. Hardly any rolling waves, just an ebb and flow like the earth is breathing. It helps them breathe, too. Carefully and firmly, Will winds his arms around Hannibal like one might do to stabilize a person in mental distress. A de-escalation tactic that’s worth trying – if only to see if Hannibal would offer the strength back. _[But he likes me escalated.]_

  
  
  
  


He clears his throat. “Would you like to see where I went the other day?”

  
  


\------*------

  
  
  
  


Will knows Griega is chipper like someone who is being paid to be, but he wants some performed kindness, so that’s okay. His is performed, too, and without getting paid a dime. He’s just not very good at it.

He’s quick to walk up to her at the bar, leaving Hannibal near the doorway.

“Welcome back. Glad I wasn’t a one-soup-stand.” When Will furrows his brow at the remark, she shakes her head, “weird joke, sorry.” She continues on, while slicing a lime, “who is that man?” Griega arches a very Beverly-like accusatory brow toward Hannibal. The man to the right of their conversation at the bar accidentally turns along with Will.

Hannibal looks over to the bar to see three gazes in his direction. Clearly not an invitation, but it’s impossible to politely pretend he’s un-oggled, so he reflexively throws on a cool smirk while he strides toward them.

(The stranger at the bar does his best to look back down at his drink, hyper-focused on swirling the cinnamon stick garnish.)

“Ralfs.” He offers a wave that would’ve been a handshake were she not in food prep. _[Respect for the craft.]_ He seems to wait for Will’s go-ahead for the rest of his introduction. 

“My husband.”

She smiles widely in recognition. “Oh! Hello. I’m Griega.”

He turns to Hannibal to give an explanation he hadn’t offered sooner. “We met in the park.”

Griega seems to relax immediately. “I have to admit, I was playing dumb. I saw you way out on the stones together earlier, but I’ve worked in bars long enough not to assume someone’s a spouse. Faux pas do happen.”

Hannibal looks intrigued by her. “That they do.” He takes the seat next to Will at the bar. “So, your name, Griega? Given name?”

“My focus in university was philosophy. I think I annoyed my friends enough that I earned the title of ‘The Greek Girl.’”

“Fair enough.” He smiles and decides to loop Will back into the conversation he’d kicked him out of. “So you knew Simon had a husband. Has he shared any nasty secrets? Confessed to any affairs?”

“I think he might be shy. I’ve heard nothing.”

“Not shy, just quiet.” Will laughs uncomfortably, and rolls his shoulders, reminded of countless moments in his upbringing. At least it’s not an accused diagnosis.

“No, certainly not shy.” Hannibal smiles over at Will affectionately.

“Maybe he just wants you all to himself,” Griega tries.

She and Hannibal laugh heartily and Will, knowing what will quell Hannibal’s teasing laughter, responds, “I think that’s exactly what it is.”

To an outsider, this seems like passive, marital flirtation, but the phrase chisels a few times between them before it’s lost in the continued conversation.

Will feels hot on the left side of his face. The strange man who was on his right has moved down the bar.

“So, I hope it is less of a social risk now for me to bring up: this is the man you are so affected by?”

“Hmm?” Hannibal nearly sings at the question.

“The other day, Simon and I spoke of this idea. Blurring together. Is it so bad to blur with someone else?” The small woman realizes she’d been gesturing with her blade now that the limes were sliced and quickly tucks it back into the roll of her apron. “To be surrounded by shadows and mirrors and shared things. It’s all a bit the same, right? We are all a little blurred.”

“The best of us are affected deeply by others.” Hannibal smiles at her. “So who are your favorites to read?”

“Oof. Gadamer, Baudrillard, and Krishnamurti to name a few.”

Will scrunches his frown to laugh. “None of them are Greek.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got dumb friends.” She wipes down the bar and winks.

Hannibal’s enjoying himself. “The first two I’m familiar with and, if I’m not mistaken - Krishnamurti, he’s _‘to be completely alone implies the mind is free of influence’_?”

“Yes, _‘religious spirit and scientific temper.’_ ”

“According to him, to be unique is to be exceptional at something and to be alone is to be without influence. Well, I love to be exceptional and I’d hate to be alone, so I’ll concede to influence.” Hannibal chirps effortlessly. The air around him probably feels flirted with.

Griega laughs loudly and nervously, not knowing what to do with the charming attention. “How could we ever be alone if we can quote the greats?”

  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


That night, at the end of their nightly rituals - showered, teeth brushed, chapters read - there is a moment in the bedroom when one quiet palpably shifts into another kind of quiet.

Will gets up to replace his book on the shelf and, without breaking eye contact or saying a word, takes his shirt off before climbing into bed for the night and Hannibal just… watches. Knows it’s for him. He’s already lying down, but he sits up and removes his shirt for sleep as well. It’s heated and intentioned but it’s not a promise. Just an ellipsis. Will can at least move to make way for the undeniability of it all.

They click off their bedside lamps.

Hannibal doesn’t move his body closer, but presses a thumb to Will’s mouth that hangs open. He drags his thumb once and hard from canine to canine, retracts his hand, and sets it back on his own bare stomach. _[Reassurance I am a carnivore]._

When Will looks up, he notices Hannibal’s eyes are closed, already attempting to sleep.

Will whispers into the air. “You think about it.”

Hannibal doesn’t open his eyes but his breath quickens slightly. “All the time.”

They both fall asleep within minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> \- Abigail will be in the story more soon, she's spreading her wings :,-)  
> \- Griega will not get hurt! Not on my watch!


	4. Penant, Unwitnessed

Will shuffles to sit back against the headboard. “You stayed in bed.”

“Yes, well I was enjoying a few moments before starting my day.” Hannibal turns onto his side. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“No, I had a strange dream, though.” Will remembers the general structure of it. It was more vivid, narrative, and organized than his nightmares. Earthier, too.

“Yes?”

“I was walking in my old home. There wasn’t any furniture or people, just me. And dream-me started feeling… guilty. _Sorry_ for the _wood_ . Shaved down and then varnished. And then,” he swallows some spit, (not used to talking for so long), “I walked into the forest – not one I recognized – and I died or, uh, resigned to it there.” _[I miss the forest. I’d resign there now.]_

“Do you see through your own eyes in your dreams or do you watch yourself?” Hannibal tries not to interrupt but he wants to walk through the dream as well.

“A mixture, mostly my own, though in this dream I watched myself. So… I died in the forest and slowly became the nutrients, rich soil, for new trees. They… _thrived_ in me. And then, without seeing the axe, I was the wood in my own house.” _[Or maybe I held the axe. Can’t remember.]_

“Walked on by strangers?”

“No, just collecting dust.” _[It wasn’t all that bad.]_

Hannibal, raising a skeptical brow, starts, “you seem very desperate to give penance, Will.”

Will swings his head back dramatically. “I will draw a line there, doc. You can’t be my therapist anymore.”

Hannibal sits up and smooths the sheets over his thighs. “I apologize. If it makes it feel more like a conversation, you may serve as my therapist in return.”

“Okay, I will.” He sits on the edge of the bed and, like it’s on the tip of his tongue, starts, “we _have_ to talk about Abigail. Most importantly, how you want to complete the indoctrination started by Hobbs.”

Hannibal holds in a sigh and a smirk. “You are frustrated that I didn’t rewrite her. If that were at all possible. Maybe we all were in a way _indoctrinated_ \- so to speak - with what is in us. Or perhaps ‘indoctrination’ is a word for textbooks and criminologists who are more concerned with the trauma than what path is necessary for one’s survival thereafter. But as it is, we’ve arrived at the same place now and you and I are best equipped with what will keep her safe.”

Will rolls his head along with his eyes.

Hannibal continues, moving to standing, "she survived unfathomable trauma. She will only continue if allowed unconventional methods for healing. You refuse to accept that Abigail is a closed wound. She is a resilient young woman capable of scar tissue. You imagine her and yourself as freshly bleeding.”

“Gushing,” Will bites.

“But should this fresh blood be wiped and the skin start to close… what might you start wishing for?” He sits again on the bed, now on the edge beside Will. “Here, I have a test:

“Do you want them, your half-loved ones in the States, to know that you are still alive?” He places his thumb on Will’s lips again, knowing it will be accepted there. “If they were to learn that about you, what _else_ would you want to tell them?”

He rises to get ready for the day.

“You pummel me with your attempt to show me myself. You just hit and hit and hit. But you resent, too, that you were seen and predicted. We know who you are, Hannibal. Can you _stand_ that?” Will is not entirely sure this is a point of power anymore. Not now that they share a bed across the ocean from where they met.

“So you are my mirror only when convenient. Don’t be a martyr for the law, Will, it’s not a convincing look on you. How _is_ Freddie, by the way?”

“A lot better than Beverly.” _[There’s the old venomous bile. It tastes of self-loathing.]_ “God, fighting with you feels like fighting with myself.”

“I think it might only be unproductive. I’m glad you said something, Will. Embrace speaking.” Hannibal continues, now almost in a whisper, “does it ever cut up your tongue? The shards of fighting words that you don’t let out?”

_[Yes. Not just the words.]_ Will squeezes his eyes shut toward the ceiling. “At what point… in the last year…” and opens them, “did I stop being a person?”

Hannibal actually looks a little sympathetic for him. Like a therapist. “You are a person still. It’s just louder now.”

_[So that’s what that sound is.]_

“Then maybe I will not be requiring a second narrator.”

“Will, you were suffering under your own unreliable narrator before. How so very _Tell Tale Heart_ of you, though the analogy may be a little on the nose. Perhaps I provided the negative to show you what parts of you can be trusted.”

“Not asked for. Not needed.” Will finds himself half-agreeing, but mindlessly shaking his head. “I should _hate_ you. Maybe I do. It’s… poisonous to insinuate that I am anything like you.” He drags his feet back and forth on the hardwood. “But I find myself… tethered to you. Is this what we’ll be forever? Pitiful patient and the bleeding heart doctor? Me, forever needing to be sorted all out and delusional for pointing fingers?” He lets loose a vicious chuckle. “Or, perhaps we’re closer to ‘the disobedient subject of a hypnotist.’”

Hannibal’s nostrils flare. They both know the ‘insinuations’ have merit. Hannibal pulls a simple cotton shirt from the drawer and pivots the subject. “Making amends with the self is a necessary type of liberation. I wanted to expedite your becoming because… I found myself impatient for you. Tethered as well.” He tugs the shirt down, flexes his jaw, and speaks again. “I enjoy your company, Will. You challenge me in many ways and assure me in others. But I am not your teacher and I will not tell you who you must be. But you _are_ here with us. Decide what to do with your self-punishment or you will make yourself ill on it.” 

With a warning glare – _heed my expert opinion_ – over his shoulder, he leaves the room, leaving Will sitting on the edge of the bed, now staring down at his pale feet contrasting the deep varnish on the wood below.

  
  


_[Hannibal is not venom. I have always had the venom in me, making me sick. Upset that I now want a different kind of wickedness to ruin me before I metabolized the last one.]_ Will remembers a book. _[“it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire...”]_ A sorrowful thought but it doesn’t hurt.

_[There are many things I have to make amends with to go on living.]_

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  
  


They go most of the day not talking. It’s deafeningly silent in every room of the apartment.

Hannibal leaves for the majority of the afternoon and Will tries to familiarize himself with every book on the shelves in their bedroom. The collection is a mixture of compulsory reading for school and the tenants’ interests. It makes for an interesting combination.

At the sound of the front door opening, he walks a little too quickly out into the shared area.

Abigail is already setting down plates when they both enter the kitchen, preparing for whatever meal is coming. Hannibal silently sets down bags of takeout from the Chinese restaurant by the campus. _[A peace offering?]_

While he puts away his outdoor wear and gets settled, Abigail and Will, a little bewildered, pull the stacks of containers from the bag. Mongolian beef, orange chicken, ciao mian, brown rice. 

They open the packages to put in the middle of the table to share. It’s one of the more surreal moments of their time here.

When water glasses are filled and everyone’s seated, Hannibal begins speaking, clearly reciting a speech he rotated in his mind like a lecture through the day.

“In our home we will not become pieces of ourselves. I will not allow it.”

“Is this us saying Grace?” Abigail looks over at Will, who gives her back a toothy smile.

“Dear Abigail, good Will, I’m not your surrogate creator nor am I your grand forgiver. All of our sins are our own. I hope you know you are allowed to move on from here. We'll keep each other's secrets and we will live free.” He reaches his hands out to them, and they tentatively take them. It does turn into some bizarre, probably sacrilegious, form of saying Grace.

Hypothetically, they _could_ all live free now in their aliases, start new lives here, see if time actually holds the cure it is known for. But they are tied together by something more than blood, something that can’t be removed and leave them living.

Will loses his smile. “Feeling reverent?” 

Hannibal glances at him briefly and serves himself food from the containers. “Yes. I find myself hoping that we can become more than our stories.”

“I’d like that.” Abigail’s eyes flicker between the two of them. Surrogate creator or not, he had become her guardian.

She was forgiven, molded, kilned, presented like a gift rather than a child. It is a deviant mind that sees a daughter this way. It is often the mind of a parent that sees a daughter this way. It’s a common crime. 

Will looks down at his food and says nothing. _[He thinks I’m leaving. He’s backtracking into humility.] [In his way.]_

  
  


Will knows he won’t and can’t leave. Bound to her by guilt and the sourceless abundant mysterious love of a father. Bound to him by their rare earth magnet.

_[At what point does withholding from him become a self-punishment, too?]_

  
  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


In the bedroom, Will not so subtly watches Hannibal changing for bed. 

Hannibal buttons up a sleeping shirt and looks down at Will, already dressed and climbing under the covers. 

Will starts, “seems strange that you would call us simple sinners. Seems a little more boundless than that.”

He smiles down in a frustratingly sultry condescension. “Will, do you dogear all the passages in The Bible to recount the sins you commit? Want a tier system?” 

Will smirks. “I don’t find myself around many bibles.”

“You might discover that the universe is not watching as closely as you think. There is not a chemical code dictating morality.” Hannibal stares. “Wounding, gossip, deceit, drinking… adultery, blood-eating. You’d want to think less of shame. It’s a callous human thing, is it not? Imagining there is a government of the cosmos watching all that each human does. And that you can be a human in the right way or the wrong way. It’s not by mercy or celestial forgiveness. Who is _really_ watching?

He climbs into bed and continues. “There is only the brain and the doing.”

  
  


“I don’t see it like that. But I am tired… of these hands.” Will holds up his arms like a surgeon, half expecting the thicket of veins and tendons from his wrists and fingers to give off visible sparks in the air. “Not using them the way I want.”

“Yes.” Hannibal sucks his teeth. “But is it _tiring_ or is it the regretted burial of excess energy? I believe you have no chipped shoulder, Will. What you are dealing with are punctured lungs. From a long time of allowing your own folding.”

Will stares back, feeling desperately seen. 

“Goodnight, Will.”

He flicks off the lamp on his side.

  
  
  


They lay awake and untouching, unspeaking. The bed is so quiet that night that Will looks to see if Hannibal is still there. He is. Each time he looks. He is.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is mostly written. Was supposed to part of this one but I like the flow better separate.


	5. About Tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \---islamophobia, but it turns out ok :)

The following day, agitation at the continued hush in the apartment solidifies into a brick of rage in Will’s stomach. _[It’d be crazy not to scream and keep screaming. At least that’d keep the caving chest full.]_

  
  
  


He spends the entire day out and alone, going into a few shops without buying anything. On some strange impulse, though, he buys a small jar of blackberry jam at an artisanal bakery for Abigail’s toast in the mornings. Walks around with the heavy paper bag for hours.   


  
  


As night begins, Will walks in a winding path, unconsciously trying to be lost, as though the city might hide him away if he promised to forget his way back. In a less residential area but not quite in the tourist part of town, Will enjoys the shadowed part of the street. An opportunity to be unwitnessed. A long ways away, he can see an argument. He doesn’t speed up his approach, but he makes an active effort to silence his footsteps as he gets within earshot of the dispute.

It’s between a white Irishman and a woman in a green niqab, who’s holding her own while he harasses her.  _ [Nothing she hasn’t heard before.]  _ But the man, seemingly out of nowhere, makes a bear-like swipe at her face, tugging down her niqab until it's almost entirely off, its seams stretched. 

While she fumbles backwards for the cloth and whimpers in relief that the man didn't hurt her, Will is already behind him, a single hand on the side of the man’s head, cracking his skull and face once against the brick wall beside them.

He’s breathing but unconscious, and blood doesn’t start to pour from the compound fracture until he’s completely nestled on his side on the ground. 

Will and the woman stare down at his work, checking his own hands for blood. No splatter, nothing. No forensic traces, none at all.

He finally looks up and catches a surprised but half-amused eye crinkle, while she continues to hold the corner of the stretched fabric to cover her nose and mouth again.  Will feels compelled to speak. “I, um. I didn’t see your face. Don’t think about that. In case that was on your mind.” 

Her eyes are so humored and grateful that it drips a dollop of honey over what was already a sweet adrenaline. “I didn’t see yours either.”

He nods and looks down at the man again. “Well, I think he’s alright here. Have a good night.” They go in opposite directions. Quickly.

In his brain there is a click. Like a realigned spine, the way it burns in that expanding way.

He lives in Galway. Rents a place here with his family. His mind paints strands of an aurora in the sky on his walk, as though the town would gain every feature and moment in the world all at once. The small burning would hold him up, the moss he’d let grow on his sleeping form incinerated off his body.

  
  


While he turns onto a more bustling stone street, a man still plays guitar. People still sit at the pubs’ outdoor seating. There’s still blackberry jam in his brown paper bag. Tonight, Will made only a single interruption to a single life and gets to go on living. Now increasingly aware of his vertebrae, though feeling he cannot be snapped. And, for the first time, he knows he’s not covered in dust.

_ [There is the liberation.]  _ The universe is not watching him. Maybe the man’s blood would drain from him, equally unwatched by the universe.

  
  


Will wants to go home to Hannibal. And he can, so he does.

  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


“These are really very good, Abigail.” Hannibal spreads a stack of sketches and watercolors on the kitchen table. “Are these places you’ve seen or are they imagined?”

The pages are a large variety of flowers, garden scenes, and a few ivy covered building faces.

“Yeah, around the city. I sketch them while I sit and I come back and paint them.”

Hannibal eyes the girl with astonishment. “We’ll have to find you more paint.”

“I already found more,” she smiles back, noticing the shift in his paternal regard for her. As though she physically senses her removal out of the toy box, now a person more than a prop. “This building – every inch was covered in ivy. I couldn’t even tell you what color the stone was underneath. Just windows and doors peeked out.” She shifts the thick paper back and forth a little self-consciously.

“You’ve captured it well.”

They share a warm smile. Warmer than usual, and Abigail decides to be family if he’s being family. “I like moving with you. It seems appropriate, not knowing anything. Looking forward to something.”

“Being by the water.” He slides the painting of the ivy-covered building to see the painting below, plants by the sea at a point of low tide.

She looks down at it as well. “Mayweeds. I walked all the way to a mudflat the other day and came back. Not even sure which way I went.”

Hannibal looks at her a little quizzically. “Do you enjoy this time to roam or would you like us – us  _ all _ – to spend more time together?”

“It’s just nice to be able to show my face. And be on college grounds even if I can’t go. American student with a GED - not a hot commodity on paper.”

“Well, you are very bright. It may just take time.” He lifts out a single arm to tighten across her shoulders. “Or connections.” He smiles down, jostling her a little. “If I assume a professorial position during a more permanent stop, which is a personal project – we can easily find you a place in the world. The world has plenty of places.”

When they shift apart, they try to control slightly strained exhales. Not quite used to this performance, especially as it becomes suspiciously organic. Abigail straightens up her stack of paintings and offers a small “goodnight” before retreating to her room for the night.

Abigail has always felt well beyond her years – killing does that; not feeling human does that – but being alongside a protector like Hannibal, who perhaps doesn’t know how to love but knows how to fake it, who doesn’t try to uproot her from herself, who towers over her– it feels like the best simulation of family that she’ll achieve. And Will… maybe love he knows, but he is too sick on himself to provide her with any just yet. And that is okay. Patient she waits in the water.

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


When Will finally makes it to the top landing in their building, he is so winded from the long walk and adrenaline spike that he feels as though he might pass out.

He opens the front door to the deep yellow of the kitchen, causing Hannibal to look up from where he was rummaging through the cabinets. He immediately notices the wild energy coming from Will.

While he shrugs off his coat and stores his shoes, Will nearly pants out, “do you want to lay down with me for a while?”

Hannibal takes the paper bag from his hand and sets it on the kitchen table, quickly following him to the room. Watching closely for any indication of what’s about to happen.

They lay down on their sides, facing one another.

Will attempts to breathe down through his heartbeat. “I don’t want to feel this far away.”  _ [But I’m deeply, entirely ashamed for wanting to be closer.] _

Hannibal places his hand in the center of the bed between them, overlapping their pinkies and ring fingers. “Yes, well, we’ve both seen to that distance.”

Will knows that Hannibal’s quick mind also governs a volatile heart, that it would need to be handled now with tact. He lays on his back but keeps his face close. “Y’know. I liked being inside your mind. Before I knew it was yours, I liked it there.” 

Hannibal just watches him.

Will laughs with his chest. “You may delight in your own internal world, but I don’t much like looking within. Sometimes I needed the respite of… seeing through eyes in control. Allowing yourself whatever you wanted.”

Hannibal swallows. “Not vicarious, not aspirational.”

“It felt like,” Will considers, “reading an antique diary. Not my own word choice, not my own life, but oddly familiar how persistently human our need for expression can be. Even if anonymous. Even separated by hundreds of years.”

A silence passes. 

When their noses touch for a second in the center of the bed, Will speaks into the breath between them. “I’ve grown accustomed to… wanting you in a vacuum.”

Hannibal doesn’t seem surprised. “You want me only in a vacuum? Can’t stand what we might do when let roam in the crowds?”

“I don’t think we are made for public consumption.”

Hannibal lights up with a twinge of humor. “Curious as to why you would say ‘public consumption’ as though  _ we’d _ be the ones consumed.”

Will huffs a voiced laugh and thinks for a beat. “I like the quiet and uncomplicated until the very moment I can’t stand it.” He can’t help when his hands vibrate a little.

Will has a strange thought while staring at the sleepy man beside him.  _ [I wonder how his blood might taste. If it'd be enough to nourish me. To survive on him alone.] _

He whispers again into the small space between them, “I did something tonight.” It’s easier to admit his aching thirst for violence than it is to admit how absolutely parched he’s become for Hannibal. 

Hannibal nods. “If we are safe, it is something we can discuss tomorrow,” he says, partially walled behind his surgeon's chill. Tired and uncertain.

Still,

they fold their arms around each other until they’re in an embrace, chin on the other’s shoulder, Hannibal’s weight leaning heavily on Will’s chest. Something that feels like greeting an old friend.

They fall asleep like that, dressed in their clothes from the day.

  
  



	6. Rain for Lavender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whistles casually*  
> i hope you like dialogue lmao cuz I have stuff to say  
> This is a family :,=)

Again, Will wakes up in a half-made bed. One less cold than usual. _[I wonder if sleep can be rattled if it’s wrapped.]_

_[If hell turns out to be real, who is to say I will hate the warmth?]_

  
  


He shuffles groggily to take a shower, reminded there’s only sweat to wash from himself. As he scrubs his body with that familiar lemongrass and lavender, he half expects to see it grow there. All covered in stalks and flowers, unrecognizable but to the earth. He’d let it. Only existing to be something lovely. His last chance to surrender to any nature but his own.

_[I am who he says I am. Am I still my own?]_

  
  
  


When he gets to the kitchen, he just sees Abigail at the table beside an empty plate, starting a new sketch. She looks up at the noise.

“Morning.” 

“Good morning.” He smiles back. “I guess in Ireland I sleep in. Wasn’t an option with the pack.”

“Maybe wherever we go next you’ll have a pack,” she offers, looking hopeful.

“Do you… have an idea where we’ll go?” He finds it odd that he hasn’t asked until this moment.

“I know Hannibal wants to show us Paris and Italy. Cities on rivers. He likes water a lot I think.”

Will’s stomach seems to be home to some growing flowers after all. “Yeah? Anywhere else?”

“He mentioned Tunis and Lisbon as _‘less predictable destinations and great alternatives’_ ,” she mimics his deep voice.

“Great alternatives,” he repeats. “Uh, did you see the jam? I feel stupid now, but it reminded me of you.”

She looks genuinely touched by Will’s attempts at affection. “I tried it already, actually. It was interesting on sourdough.”

The banal conversation is warm and easy the way kitchen talk should be. He has a few haunting memories with kitchens.

  
  
  
  


Will heads out in the gray weather in no particular direction, wondering what Hannibal possibly busies himself with.

  
  


\------*------

  
  


Will goes to a different park today, one near the center of town. 

  
  


Griega is there, sitting on a concrete bench and narrowly avoiding windy tendrils from a willow tree. 

“Hi.” She looks up, almost confused. “What are the chances?”

“Pretty high, I would say.”

She looks around, pretending to scan the small city. “I’d say the same.”

“Would you like company?”

“Would _you_?” She returns, already moving her bag that was no doubt placed there to protect her from predatory men.

“No work today? – oh, what’re you reading?”

“No, this is just the park by my flat. And rereading _Verdad y Método_ – it’s Gadamer’s _Truth and Method_. My love affair with his essays started in Venezuela so I prefer to read his works in Spanish.” She breathes out a nearly concealed sigh and fidgets with her fingers.

“Holding stress in the body or did you think of something?”

“ _Perceptive_. Oh, I’ve just been thinking of moving lately. I’ve been running through my choices.”

Will attempts to come off as socially adept for once and makes an effort to hold a conversation. “Why lately?”

“Not sure. Ireland can be a little small. My flat makes it feel even smaller.” Griega grins.

“Where would you go?” _[Is this what social people do? Just ask questions?]_

“Nowhere that you’d romanticize, maybe. I’d stay in the EU, possibly central Europe?”

“What’s stressful? The money?”

“I have three jobs and no kids, so money isn’t the issue.” She smacks her hands down on her thighs as though snapping herself out of something. “But I like to get in my own way a bit. Deliberate for no reason. Philosopher’s dream: stubborn for the fun of it.”

He nods in understanding. “So how long has this thought experiment been going for?”

“Just the last few years. And then I meet someone and want to linger ‘round and then it doesn’t work out and I want to go – and then I have just a grand day and want to stay, et cetera et cetera. Cycles.”

“So nothing is tugging at you right now?”

“Not in any painful way, no.”

A beat of silence.

“What are your three jobs?” He smiles, a little incredulously.

“Bartender, tutor, lecturer - technically on sabbatical.” She holds up a hand. “And to answer your obvious question, I bartend because it’s nice to meet new people and even nicer to have extra money.”

Will nods, remembering splitting time with jobs.

She feels the need to explain further. “I worked in a pub when it was the obvious option. I don’t really hate it. I like it more than teaching.”

“Oh, I bet.” Will thinks of his time as a professor and tries to remember if he ever really liked doing that. Or doing anything.

Griega throws her head back theatrically. “Both provide gateways for slimy eighteen year old boys to push my mental limits.”

That actually pulls a pretty genuine laugh out of Will.

“What do you do for money, Simon?”

 _[Dammit.]_ “Used to be a consultant, but I left, uh–”

She interrupts him and nearly exclaims. “Okay, we have known each other for a few days now, so I think I have earned the right to say this. You look like _shit_. Distracted?”

“Just weird. Things are… strained.” Strangely, this line of questioning requires fewer lies.

“Surely it can’t be trouble at home?”

 _[Oh, surely it can.]_ “Things are passionate in the house. And can lead to a _long_ quiet after.”

“And he’s chatty, so it must sting even more.”

Will barks out a laugh. “He is certainly chatty, yes.”

“Well, have _you_ said everything _you_ need to?”

“Not at all. It’s… hard. Bad history.” _[And I’m sick on shame. On missing someone I never was.]_

“Do you need to get through the history before you get to these issues or are they sort of intertwined?”

“‘History’ maybe wasn’t the best word. A bit of a rotten foundation, but, in some disgusting way, we have the ability to have a better life together than we would apart. But I also like to get in the way, deliberate despite there being a single option.” He would laugh at himself if it wasn’t an agonizing truth. “If I don’t look forward, the fact of the commitment will just hurt and be nothing else.” Will runs a hand over his face. _[That’s not what will wipe it away, but nice effort.]_

“And you are definitely committed? No doubt about it?”

He thinks. _[We crumble ourselves and cling around each other like the rings of Saturn. But I will never say that aloud.]_ “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Does he know that?”

“He’s unsure I want him entirely.”

“Why?”

_[Because I want him to question his reality.]_

“I don’t know. We both like a chance at the upper hand. This is mine.” It’s embarrassing to hear it spoken aloud. _[She’s missing context. Context being we are unwell and only understand blood.]_

She grunts out a disapproving laugh. “That’s toxic. Pssh, but you’re sure he’s committed to you? Because I’m on the turn for that man.”

“He’s committed. Ralfs has… always been the pursuer. To say the least. But if it turns out I’m wrong about that, I will put in a good word for you.”

She laughs and smacks a hand on his knee a little too hard. “Maybe he’s just been the most vocal, but you probably went after him in your own way. Maybe he feels like the uncertainty is a new thing and wonders why.”

Will doesn’t respond but forgets to mask thoughtfulness. _[Immigrant, professor, and a bartender, of course she’s mastered social intuition.]_ “I’m afraid to approach it at all. I think… we want each other _too_ much.” 

He’s immediately humiliated by his reply and visibly winces.

“Relax, I won’t tell your husband you fancy him.” She makes a scandalized face, which is disrupted by a few heavy raindrops let slip by the tree above them. “But I’m not sure it can be called coveting when you’re already married, Simon. If you’re in it, just be in it. What a waste to hold your own leash.” 

The rain starts to slam down now.

  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


“Ah, back so soon? Was Tesco all out of walks in the parks today?” Abigail chirps, pointing out the window at the new rain.

Hannibal turns toward the sink, his back facing the both of them. 

“I was suddenly homesick.” Will smiles at Abigail, accidentally flicking his eyes to the back of Hannibal.

Abigail starts putting her boots on. “I’m gonna check out the campus, actually. We can have dinner tonight, though. At 7. Like always.”

He raises a skeptical brow. “You were going to check out the campus right now? It’s pouring.”

Abigail raises a mirroring brow. “You really want to pester me to _stay?_ ” She doesn’t need to indicate what they’re talking about. She squints almost in impatient humor.

 _[Smart girl.]_ He plays along, feeling reverse parented. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Go live your life.” He shoos her away, wide-eyed. Almost afraid of his next move.

Abigail at least grabs her phone and her coat before heading out a moment later.

Hannibal is rather clueless to that interaction, seeming more pensive and guarded than he was the day before. 

Will crosses the room to walk up behind him, tapping the counter with his knuckles. The same second that Hannibal turns toward him, Will runs a quick and smooth hand up his chest and around the back of his neck to draw him into a breathy kiss that they both deepen nearly as soon as it starts. The type of response from a man who has pictured something many times. And waited very long.

Hannibal is already tugging up Will’s shirt, wet from the rain, when he pushes him against the small table; the tile screeches loudly and Will’s head collides with the conical ceiling lamp, causing deep yellow light to make rotating shadows around the kitchen.

Hannibal catches the lamp and makes a ‘woops’ expression, which reads strange on his usually static face.

_[There are a lot of faces I have not seen yet.]_

They both fall into laughter on the other’s shoulder and catch their breath there for just a moment.

Hannibal slowly takes the lead now, settling the lamp in place and steering them both down the poorly painted hallway towards their bedroom.

They each discard their own clothes onto the floor before climbing into bed, Will first, followed by Hannibal tumbling onto him with an intentional heavy clumsiness that bounces them up once before they lay.

*

*

*

* * *

*

*

*

  
  


Exhausted, they lay in bed, legs intertwined, eyes half-lidded, tracing fingertips along the other’s tired body.

“Would you tell me what happened last night? Was it something equally sinful?” Hannibal pauses his affections on Will’s throat to wait for his answer.

“I… explored vigilantism.”

Hannibal clearly holds back a laugh. “Hmm?” He rests his face in Will’s hair.

“Crushed a zygomatic against brick.”

“Can I assume this zygomatic had a person attached?”

Will rolls his eyes, feeling rather than seeing a smirk. “Glad you’re enjoying this. Yes, there was a person attached.”

Hannibal hums. “Force of your arm or force of your leg?”

“Arm.”

“If he didn’t bleed out, he could have possibly gone blind. Did he deserve it?”

Will pauses his hand. “Not sure that’s up to me.”

Hannibal pulls back to look at him. “You made it up to you. The moment you put your hands on him, ‘deserve’ was at your discretion.”

  
  


“He deserved it.”

There is a rather peaceful quiet of breath and fingers.

Will closes his eyes and whispers, “I made you wait a long time.”

“I would have only wanted you this way. I’d have waited years to have you this way.” Hannibal draws a few circles on Will’s hip bone with his fingers. “I’d wait years for the next time, too.”

“You don’t have to wait years. Maybe hours, though.”

“Abigail is to be back in 45 minutes?”

“Yeah, but something about her tone before she left makes me believe she wouldn’t dare open the door even a minute early.”

Hannibal chuckles at the thought and roughly pulls Will even closer with a single hand on his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone have a good Halloween 👻


	7. Mixed Penmanship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A planning stage.

Will had expected pain and blood with Hannibal given his penchant for blades. But it was a different kind of strength, a different kind of bruising. Somehow both brutal and tender, attentive and animal; all blunt and weaponless. All furrowed brow and Herculean. There would be time in the future for reverence and pacing, but tonight Hannibal touches him like he’s discovering a new type of human, teetering on whether or not to crush him. The brutality of mutual obsession.

Will has the opportunity to forget that he is a mind of delicate electricity like everyone else. For now, he’s just a system of muscles. He wonders if humans are arbitrarily divided units. If no atoms can possibly touch, how can we say we end at our skin? _[If the mind is manipulated by another, if skin cells pass, if spit mixes, how can we say we are two different things? This is the blurring. We are each other.]_

It feels too profanely human to believe Hannibal has ever been this way with anyone else. The cooling sweat will only remind Will of how much of a body he is, how much of the earth he is. Cooling in the way soggy pine porches feel under bare feet. Gutting in a moonlight way - gutting in the way a sunrise guts, in the way of:

_[Never end. Never end. Never end. Never end. Never end. Never end. Never end.]_

\---

And now, with a precious 20 minutes to spare, they reluctantly shower and change for dinner. 

While Hannibal buttons his emerald shirt, Will leans against the dresser. “I’m glad you didn’t run when I told you to run.” He knows it resulted in his bloodied colleagues, but he also knows the selfish wrath in his throat that makes that not matter. He wonders how much he can forget if he submits to it more often, maybe that’s the impulse to conquer Troy alone.

“You know I would have found you if I did.” Hannibal abandons his buttoning efforts while he walks over to Will and frames him loosely against the dresser. “And I think you would have known where to look.”

Will closes his eyes and nods, holding down a shudder at the thought. Where their exposed skin touches, cool from the shower, it feels like the effortless sliding of silk.

Hannibal kisses him on the temple. “Let’s go - I haven’t even started dinner preparations.” He leaves the room and Will.

“Perish the thought,” Will mutters under his breath, though remembering that this is not a depleting resource, that he doesn’t have to hoard their moments together out of fear that they’ll stop.

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


The front door opens at exactly 7 and Abigail shakes her dripping boots in the hall before placing them in the outerwear assembly by the door.

Hannibal looks up from monitoring the stove temperatures. “Welcome home, Abigail. I’m afraid I didn’t get much of a headstart on dinner, so we may have to push the 7 to a 7:30.”

Abigail hangs her coat while taking in the kitchen scene. “Oh, that’s fine. I’d like to change first anyway. It’s _really_ raining.” She holds out a dripping strand of hair as evidence before adding, “looks like you both have changed as well.” She practically skips to her bedroom.

Will sets down the final plate on the table and he looks at a very amused Hannibal. “There are too many intelligent people in this place. I don’t remember her being this quippy when we met her.” His voice turns up. “Was she this quippy when we met her? Or was that your doing?”

Hannibal turns back to watch the boiling pot and rumbles quietly over his shoulder, “she’s happier now. Though, I think that knack for banter is hers alone.”

Hannibal uses tongs to plate swirls of glistening linguine, followed by sliced buttery chicken breast and lemon-spritzed endive lettuce. Will clenches his abdomen to push back the sound of his hungry stomach and reexamines the memory of their Chinese takeout, now accepting it won’t happen again as long as they live. He doesn’t mind, though, while smelling the fresh and fatty dinner in front of him.

He fills their glasses, staring fondly at the ceiling lamp and Hannibal catches the glance and looks up at it, too.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Abigail walks as casually as she can into what she knows will be a hilarious amount of tension.

  
  
  


It’s quiet for at least three minutes after they sit.

  
  


Hannibal’s lips quiver in a poorly held smirk while he sips from his water glass and Will keeps his eyes trained on his food. They sit in a self-aware silence, probably each waiting for someone to break. Finally, Abigail snorts, which turns into a breathed chuckle, and then rhythmed giggles. She can’t suppress her laughter even when she puts another bite of chicken in her mouth. Will joins in, followed by Hannibal, until all three of them are just giggling without words at the kitchen table. It goes on until they’re satisfied that they don’t need to address anything overtly. It feels better too. 

  
  
  


Hannibal finally speaks after a moment. “Tomorrow we can go to the countryside, I think.”

“Just to see it?” Abigail asks, though interested.

“I think it is a fitting way to start saying goodbye to our time here.”

Will isn’t surprised by the mention of their leaving, but he might have expected that they would stay the length of the season at least. “When will we leave Ireland?”

Hannibal sets his fork down to speak, sensing a longer conversation. “I think in two weeks, perhaps 10 days.”

“Will we get new identities again?” Abigail looks excited at the prospect, maybe fantasizing that her gritty days of copy killing and hung pelts were over, making room for a sleeker, elusive, international criminal persona. It goes detected in her voice. Every word she says is a bit of a self-portrait in that way. It’s a lovable quality.

“I have several ideas for destinations but there are only a few alternative identities. I don’t have all of ours exactly memorized, unfortunately.”

Will has been a bird of passage since he was a child, but the result was only a feeling of distance from any place. It’s interesting, however, that Hannibal, too, was a bird of passage since childhood, but there seem to be dozens of places that are all equally him. His… lifestyle requires some proximity to others but his mindset is equally, if not more, distant from the collective. Just as Hannibal is foreign wherever he goes, Will and Abigail will be that now, too. Distant from the social world in perfectly reasonable ways, and it is the distance that allows for the deviance.

In luring, Abigail watched herself die over and over. And feared for her life several times since. Will worries if she feels distant from the social world or if she’s fractured her existence so many times that she’s gone even from herself. He wonders if she cares for herself. If she wants to live. He imagines, in her position, he'd feel older than the sky. But the manipulative are infinitely adaptable. _[She is scar tissue.]_

Will realizes that, despite Abigail’s life of various confinements, he will have the most difficulty ever having a place. No matter how much he wills himself into the wallpaper, he’ll invite the most hideous interest.

 _[Maybe using the imperial system and my failures in their languages will invite enough questions that we won’t even get to the subject of eye contact and neurodivergence.]_ He feels relief at the thought.

While conversation rolls on, Will presses the tips of his fingers to massage his brow through a blooming headache. This catches Hannibal’s eye.

“Feeling alright?”

“Just, uh, tired. I haven’t adjusted to the time difference as well as either of you I think.”

Hannibal smirks. “You also have not slept or eaten as much as a person should.”

Abigail chimes in, “yeah I think the other day you didn’t eat at all, unless you always get food while you’re on your walks.” She knows he doesn’t ‘always’ do anything.

Hannibal places a hand over his. “I’m going to start leaving you meals before I leave for the day, if you’ll accept the help. I already pack them for myself.”

Will nods, feeling self-conscious at the attention. “Where is it that you go everyday?”

“I do various things.”

Will and Abigail glance at each other.

The corner of Hannibal’s mouth turns up, realizing what they're thinking. “Hmm, well we’ve been here several days. I’ve done many things. I stop at the market every morning. Yesterday, I had a suit fitting.” He thinks. “I’ve revisited a french restaurant I found early on. I’ve missed wine.”

Will smiles, satisfied. _[I am the only one that’s made someone bleed here.]_ A strange thought but not altogether uncomfortable. He stands up and collects everyone’s plates and utensils to wash in the sink.

  
  
  


Abigail looks up again. “So will you decide tonight where we’ll go?”

“I thought we could decide together.” Hannibal offers, looking a little vulnerable. He pulls out a pen and paper from a drawer by the sink and begins to make columns of categories rather than simple pros and cons.

“Can I write?” Abigail asks and Hannibal obliges easily, sliding her the pen and pad.

“I _was_ going to write in English, or are you just feeling idle?”

“I think my handwriting fits the subject. I think yours is more for stuff like… The Declaration of Independence.”

Will laughs loudly in surprise despite not facing the table.

Hannibal seems perfectly content to accept teasing at his expense if they’re delicate and witty, so he seems rather amused. “Do you agree with her assessment?”

Will turns around from the sink. “When I looked through your notes it felt like I was reading an original copy of Scott's _The Lady of the Lake._ ”

Hannibal’s mouth drops open in faked astonishment, though clearly flattered.

“Okay okay okay, what do I write? You listed ‘urban,’ ‘rural,’ and… ‘linguistic proximity.’ What were the rest of the labels?”

“Whether or not I have an associated passport, whether or not we have a place there, and whether or not we could all make our own lives. I want you both to be honest.”

“‘New ID,’ ‘Home,’ ‘Own Lives.’ What are the cities again?”

“Paris, Florence, Lisbon, Mendoza, Tunis, and Bergen. A point to consider: we are just picking our first stop. We will move again, eventually.”

Abigail mimes over the pad of paper. “Paris.” She begins filling in the answers. “We all know some French.”

“Urban, though, unless you’re opposed, I’d like to sell my home in Paris and perhaps find somewhere in the countryside. It has an associated identity with the property. I could have a lecturing position and Abigail could attend school. She might even flourish there.” He looks at her fondly. “Though I suspect you’ll flourish wherever you go.”

Will joins them at the table again.

“It is generally the same case with Florence, though I’d like to keep my home there.”

“Where’s Mendoza?”

“This Mendoza is the one in Argentina. It’s a lovely mountain town. I have my own home there under the Lecter name.”

Will looks at the both of them. “No extradition.”

Abigail puts the pen down. “I’d like Bergen, I think.”

Hannibal smiles. “I think so as well. The apartment is near the university, actually. It has an associated passport, but I didn’t make arrangements for the three of us there as my time as a lecturer was many years ago. To avoid a paper trail from Baltimore, you can travel under your French identities until we arrive and coordinate something for all of us.”

“And you speak Norwegian?” Will keeps mostly quiet, deciding he could be content just about anywhere with the two of them.

“I speak Danish and the Scandinavian languages are all very similar, however, nearly everyone in town speaks English. Certainly everyone at the university.” He looks at Abigail.

Will and Abigail have more questions but they will have time to ask them. _[Who knows when the next round of decisions will be?]_

Will looks over, deeply moved by the mixture of Hannibal’s manuscript-appropriate writing and Abigail’s still very neat but far more youthful and ordinary writing. And how, within seconds of _not_ writing, she’d begun to nervously scribble at the corner of the page. He looks up at them, realizing they were waiting on his consent. “Bergen sounds great.”

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


“What subject did you teach? In Norway?”

“I offered a lecture series on Baltic literature.” He turns on his side to face Will. “It was lifetimes ago.” He holds up Will’s left hand and pulls the ring off, swiftly placing it on the right hand. “The ring is worn on the right in Norway.”

Will does the same to Hannibal’s ring. “Tell me more about the area. I know it’s on the water, but that’s about it.”

Hannibal turns off the light and whispers into the top of Will’s head, “the architecture is nearly reminiscent of the shapes and colors one would see in France, but there is something very distinct about Bergen. It’s geometric in a very pristine, very iconically Scandinavian way. Clean and storied. There are mountain views and beautiful museums.”

A day ago, Will might have been embarrassed to be lulled to sleep by the sound of creature comforts and a deep voice, but tonight, he allows it. There is no reality where he leaves this as someone unchanged and unaffected. There is no reality where he leaves this. Instead, he kisses his chest and closes his eyes. “Tell me about the apartment.”

Hannibal knows he is being used as a warm bodied white noise machine but he gladly welcomes it. “It’s by the university, so, near the center of town. Bergen can be lively, but there is something delicate about it as well. The apartment is just a little larger than this, but it is in the colors of its original materials. Brighter, too. There are islands nearby, large enough that they have their own lakes and countrysides. I thought if we left for Bergen, we might allow Abigail the place in the city for her schooling and we take a small home near the water. I don’t remember the town names off-hand, but everything is accessible by train. We can be shrouded by trees with whatever you want. We could build a home up from lumber.” When he doesn’t get a breath of response, he lets himself drift as well. 

  
  
  
  
  


*

Will dreams he's the warm sap running down the side of the sugar maple, stubbornly tangled and crystallized in its rough bark. Inedible to the human. To be taken by wildfires and decomposition.

*  
  


*


	8. To the Fjords

“Well, Ireland will miss you, Simon.” Griega places a hand on his arm.

“I will miss Ireland,” Will says, and means it. 

Trying his best to predict her schedule, Will went to the park by her pub. There she’d been sitting, not reading this time, just sitting, and didn’t ask any questions when he took the liberty to sit right next to her without invitation.

She continues. “I’m glad we met. Maybe we will meet in the water cycle, right?”

He’s hit with the realization that they don’t quite know each other well enough to exchange numbers or social media. He will slink out of this with just a few lies and a little sadness. It’s nicer to have a relationship with a clean beginning and end, like a timestamp rather than a weaving. A relief to have a breath of normalcy from his own private mythology. _[One day she will see 'Ralf' on a TV screen and... so what?]_

“Right. Well we’ve already done a lot of meetings in the water cycle.”

They recall being touched by the same rain and sea mist. The steam of the same soup.

“Here’s to many more!” Griega bends her elbow theatrically to give him a silly handshake. “And hey, I’m headed to Prague, so it’s another city on the water.”

He perks up, genuinely glad to hear she's taking a leap. “Oh, you’re moving after all. And Prague? So much for an unromantic city.”

She chuckles, resigning to the thought. “Well, maybe it’s time I look for a little romance rather than wait for it to happen to me. Even if it’s just with the river.”

“Do you speak Czech?”

“Not a word.”

Will laughs. “Well, to strange new experiences. I should get back, but I’m glad I got to see you before we left. And before _you_ left.”

They both rise to standing.

“Yeah, I better get back to the ol’ tavern. Have a nice… everything.”

“You, too.”

He leaves with less sadness than he expected to feel. It’s a nice thought, really, that they hardly knew each other and yet she deeply affected him - and not in a rattling way, not with any debt of flesh. That he’s capable of connection without blood. He’ll take the ones of blood, too. But because he wants them.

  
  


\------*------

“Kale, beet, and prosciutto blend along with a creamy pumpkin soup.” Hannibal serves the final spoonful of the salad. “I thought something rustic and simple would best match the profile of Abigail’s sourdough” 

Will gives a bewildered but impressed look. “You made that?”

“I’ve been baking a lot since we got here. Not much else to do.” She falls somewhere in the middle between Hannibal’s pride and Will’s recession from the spotlight.

As close as a surrogate daughter will get to a semblance of a genetic blend. Will schools his thoughts. _[Not quite ‘surrogate’ now that they are living together, sharing names, and coordinating her education. Not quite a mimicry anymore is it?]_

  
  
  


Hannibal sits, looking chipper. “Are we all ready for the trip tomorrow?” He raises a spoon gently to indicate they should eat.

Abigail answers. “I’m sad to leave, but I’d set my heart on city-hopping. So I was getting anxious.” 

“We’d hardly change ourselves if we don’t indulge in a little agitation from time to time,” Hannibal muses and flicks his eyes between Will and Abigail as though in a drink-less toast. “In hiding, we become too satisfied with stillness. To the point where we may forget we are hiding.”

Will bugs his eyes out a little in considering the thought. “Until it hurts.” He tries to tack on a smile as a tiny social apology for moodiness.

Hannibal takes the comment in stride and continues in his toast-like tone. “You will be Thomas and Justine Gardener of Chicago, Illinois. I have the papers in my bag and I will hold them until we get to Dublin.”

“Thomas,” Abigail smirks. 

  
  


The rest of the meal goes by in excited chatter and a general blueprint of the schedule for the next day, with two eye rolls at the mention of ‘dawn.’

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


While they finish packing in the bedroom, Will picks up the Norwegian passport.

“Alexandras Soulis, 52, born Klaipėda, Lithuania.”

  
  


Hannibal looks up from where he is folding shirts. “Wow, Alexandras is 52 now? And I didn’t get him anything.” He waits for the polite laughter he could expect at a dinner party but which he is learning not to expect from Will. “Mr. Gardener, your identity in France, is 39, so this will border on eye-turning at customs.”

He’s joking, but Will smiles uneasily. “Is there a way I can choose my age in the Norway papers? I don’t want to have such a large gap. We’re, what? 9 years apart? Even that seems… not the case.”

“I would agree.”

“So. Have you been using synthetic identities or are you using more… organic methods of identity theft?” _[Creating or taking, Hannibal?]_

“Soulis was synthetic, Paris was organic, Florence was organic many many years ago. However, the identities of my lovely passengers have all been synthetic.”

Even after all this time of knowing, Will is a little taken aback by how easily Hannibal admits to murder now. It rolls off the tongue. “How long will it take to conjure up a Soulis family?”

“It’s different country to country, but I will figure it out. There are people.” He purses his lips.

Will doesn’t hide the skepticism. “By ‘people’ are you referring to the legal experts and tech-savvy or are you referring to mortals?” They’ve come a long way from resentment. Will feels… condescending. As though he is predicting the behavior of an insubordinate student.

The dynamic is not lost on Hannibal, but he doesn’t find it so humiliating to be predictable to Will. “There are people who specialize in these sorts of things. These people are also mortal.”

There’s not much more to the subject than that. They drop it.

  
  
  
  


Will walks over to run his hands through Hannibal’s untamed hair, still wet from his shower and pauses his hand. “should we change our appearances from now on?”

“Perhaps our behaviors. I’d miss your signatures too much. Your arcade of curls, how your beard feels on my face.” He pulls him forward by the jaw to kiss him softly as punctuation.

“Hannibal, your face is circulating by now. An _airport_ \- people are bored enough to look up at those screens for hours and I’m going to bet they will remember a headline about a handsome high society _cannibal_ fugitive. Especially when he sits next to them in business class.”

Hannibal hums. “I suppose the FBI is not above painting a narrative.”

“This would be a humiliation for them - it works in their favor if they sensationalize you as a foreign and elusive devil figure.”

Hannibal watches a very stressed Will try and fail several times to buckle the fastening tie in his new suitcase. “You seem genuinely scared.”

“I am. And I’m going to buy you the ugliest coke bottle glasses in the morning. People won’t look twice at you.”

“Except to laugh.”

“Yes, except to point and laugh.” Will starts checking every drawer to see if they left anything, muttering to himself.

“Okay, that’s enough for now, come here.” Hannibal pulls him to lie down, his feet hanging off the bed.

Will lets himself be guided, but he is visibly shaking. “Getting separated tomorrow. It’s going to potentially change our lives.”

“You are incredibly intelligent. You have a gorgeous and powerful mind.” Hannibal patronizingly places his fingertips on Will’s forehead as though to tell it to be quiet. “The only thing that concerns me is your faith in law enforcement.” 

  
  


Will's mouth cracks in an irritated smirk. “It’s nice to see you laugh. I knew you had a sense of humor, I just… can tell you’re satisfied by all these turns of events. This might not be the time, though.”

“Oh, Will, the deepest part of me never stops laughing.” Something flickers across Hannibal’s eyes and he silently withholds a giggle.

“What?” 

“It will be interesting to see you both with a Lithuanian surname.”

Will smiles fondly at first, but it fades a little pensively. It’s all very jarring when viewed from above. _[Then don’t view it from above.]_

  
  


Hannibal, of course, notices and waits only a moment before posing the question. “Please consider this fully:" he pauses, "would you choose not to want me? If you could?”

“If I chose not _you_ , then I’d be choosing not _me_.” Will grits the words out of his jaw.

“Would you? Choose to be someone else?”

Will smile-frowns. “I’m trying to become someone that says no to that.”

“One day you will be.” Hannibal runs a finger back and forth on the other man’s collarbone. 

“And you’ll help me with that.” He attempts to finish the thought.

Hannibal sits up again to finish preparing everything for tomorrow. “I am only stripping you of your humility. The one that weighs like an anvil on the top of your chest when you breathe. But, being loved is not a path to the self.”

Will’s not sure if the admission was intentional, or if it helps or hurts.

  
  


They don’t kiss tonight, not until far into the dark silence, too close to the time to wake up. Will scoots up on his pillows and pulls the sleeping man into his arms. His toes only reach his ankles when aligned this way, but his arms weave around him easily, enough to make Hannibal feel properly fortressed in warmth. _[Because maybe he’d like to feel cared for and protected, too. Because maybe he has some healing to do, too.]_

  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


Bright green hills with the dark shadows of clouds. The stillness of the water compared to the speed of the train. Ireland is a small island, but lakes and hills and saturated colors paint it as the sprawling origin of stories. A pilgrimage for authors. It feels like looking at a secret. Will feels whispered to, carried across a threshold.

_[Maybe Hannibal is so convinced that morality is arbitrary because he’s been granted the fortune of awe and beauty. A persistent sensation of how small and insignificant we all are. Lowering the bar for grandiosity certainly would make a person feel powerful.]_

Will feels the itching evils in his memory recede into prickly nothings. He feels so fully present and aware of his plant’s special brand of lateral roots into the people beside him that he’s having trouble remembering what pain was. He could harness it, weaponize it if he tried, but it’s not knocking at his door now and he feels… good, a cage door opening into sunlight. Will says a grateful prayer for sight.

Hannibal never made Will believe in the Devil, but being tugged into his world made Will question his stance on God. That God may exist but is not some love of the universes made to watch us, test us. Just a force like another type of gravity, another type of electricity. That living is not something that happens to a person. Not something to do. Just something to gnaw on.

  
  
  


Eyes glued to the landscape as well, Abigail interrupts their comfortable quiet, “it’s so weird that I’m here. It was so easy for me not to be here. Or exist anymore.”

Hannibal fixes her with a bit of a pitying gaze of recognition. “It is very easy to not exist. Best not think about that.”

Abigail keeps her eyes trained on the grass they speed past and nods.

  
  
  
  


After the train to Dublin, there's a plane to Oslo, then another train to Bergen. It all only comes out to a sunrise departure and a late night arrival, with the longest stretch of travel being the train across Norway. Navigating around the hills and fjords adds a few scenic hours to the trip.

The shift from Ireland’s bright grass and ivy to Norway's far more deep colored birch, pine, and moss is noticeable and peaceful. They watch the sunset on the train and soon the stars take them in.

The town at this hour feels sleepier than it probably is, and Abigail and Will are surprised and relieved that it’s just a short walk from the train station to the apartment.

  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


The inside is structured in a similar way to the Ireland rental, but it's clean and sleek in the way daytime calms a museum. A certain masculinity to its set up, and a certain artistry to its starkness. 

Will sees bits of Hannibal in it somehow, despite its lack of detail. His younger mind haunting the floorboards, maybe.

With a bigger distinction between the living ends of the place, Abigail bloodhounds her way to the smaller bedroom's bathroom and offers a tired and grumpy goodnight.

  
  


Suitcases down, Hannibal quickly files away their items for a now more organized, more permanent stay. “Are you ready to shower and rest? I’m going to switch the sheets on our bed. I’d forgotten the other room’s bed is a simple daybed, so we can get Abigail something this week. We’ll all go together.” He lets the words trail off as he notices Will looks lost in a very warm thought. “Memory?”

Will snaps back to look at him with conscious eyes. “No, I, uh, was just thinking I’m excited to see the daylight through these windows. Whatever the opposite of a memory is, that’s what I was floating in.” 

Hannibal beams back. “Hurry up and get washed and changed so we can lie down together.”

Will blames the long day for having to mentally punish his body’s plan to weep. _[I want to die next to him. Gray-bearded and tired. I want my grave beside his grave.]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *  
> *  
> This was a transitional chapter for travel and detail sorting, but the next chapter will be... *steps around pun*.. eventful.  
> 


	9. Not Too Far From Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content of this chapter includes sexual predation (hinted at) and canon-typical violence

Will wakes in a glimmering and cool daylight, with Hannibal still asleep beside him. He takes the rare opportunity to keep exploring the corners of the home and the scene through the windows - to get more comfortable with their permanence. Bergen looks more made for the light of morning than suited for the night. Despite the highways and a handful of glass office buildings, the downtown area is serene and old in its stone.

Will gets dressed to find a minibank to pull money with Alexandras’s card. Every few years, Hannibal makes small pilgrimages to manage his properties, considering their investment value in more ways than one. _[That’s smart. It must be exhausting to be a serial killer with a specialty in theatrics.]_

The city is foreign. Well, _he’s_ foreign. Only tied to his homeland by the sugar maple wood in the ring around his finger. He grabs a few lattes from the local French-themed café to surprise the family with, definitely in an effort to compensate for all his sleepy mornings in Galway. The air is chilly in a more thorough way than it was in Ireland, but that just serves as another livewire at this hour.

  
  
  
  
  


“Oh, hi,” he offers, when he comes home to find Abigail up and pacing in the kitchen. 

“Hey, I didn’t know you were up.” She smacks her hand up and down on the counter. “It’s scary in here, right? A bit eerie.”

Will looks at her, also having sensed the distant itch of history, but is surprised at her phrasing. “Do you believe in ghosts, Abigail?”

“Not the kind in stories. I don’t… really believe in anything.” She says it mostly to the sink. “Feels like there’s an elephant in the room but I can’t tell what it is.”

“Right, well.” _[I don’t know anymore.]_ “I got some coffee and bills. We’re in the middle of everything here.”

Abigail spins on her heel, already looking more awake at the idea of coffee. “Oof, great, thanks. Y’know, I’m kind of surprised he’s still sleeping.”

Will chuckles back. “Familiar bed probably lends itself to more comfort. We can let him stay asleep.”

“We’re getting one for me, right? An official bed? I didn’t sleep too well.”

“Yeah, yes. We’re going in the afternoon.” Will winces at the still too hot drink.

“TattleCrime says CCTV caught you in Ohio yesterday.” Abigail blows on the cup casually. “Is that why you’re up? Cause your flight just got in?”

Will leans his head back and rolls his eyes. “Oh, they spotted a white male with curly brown hair in the midwest? They’re right on our heels.”

  
  


They share another warm silence. Slowly, and through many trials, their relationship has travelled from blood bond to the level of stale intimacy one might expect of an in-law. They’re both familiar with the coldness that can ring through a traditional family, so these quiet kitchen conversations are a fine alternative. Abigail knows that Will tries his best to reel back on bitterness for the sake of the home dynamic he finds so disorienting (he mistakes it for fragile) and Will knows that the visceral guilted obligation that sewed him into a father figure for Abigail is just the framework of a much more complicated social system (yet to be built). But, they both think, family is often bound by blood and obligation. (Perhaps that is exactly the way a family starts.) The two men that held her together the day she was orphaned did not, in fact, stop holding.

  
  


So they stand in the kitchen, discussing her plans to become an art therapist and to never go back to the US, while they both try not to think of how easy it was to not be in this place right now. And how funny it is that both the surreal comfort and aching pains left unsaid largely were by the design of the man asleep in the next room. 

  
  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


The interior store isn’t too far away - just on the other side of the bridge - and they resolve to get Abigail’s more suitable bed delivered before the end of the week. The store is annoyingly modern, all metals and glass and experimental reimaginings of what makes a chair, but bed frames and mattresses are so functional and flat that the group expects they’d find something not ridiculous.

Even Hannibal is offended by the displays and squints disapprovingly at the centerpieces on the example dining sets. _[Even in this life, he leans toward the baroque.]_

The man who assists them is only a few years younger than Will but appears to be several socioeconomic brackets beyond where Will ever found himself. When he leads them toward the bedroom displays, they realize they could not have been more wrong: it is very possible to put looks over function even when it comes to a bedframe and, no, they don’t have to be flat. 

When they finally find something reasonable and wooden – that will fit through their door – Will and Hannibal go to the front of the building to arrange the payment and delivery.

When they look to find Abigail again, she’s by the tile design samples and the man is still talking to her. Even from this far away, they can see that she’s uncomfortable and the man, entirely too comfortable. His hand holds her loosely by the elbow and he is speaking low and quietly.

As they approach, Abigail pivots quickly to look at them. “Ruben offered to deliver the bed in his truck tonight. We wouldn’t have to wait a week.” She looks shaken, her eyes trying desperately to communicate.

Hannibal speaks first. “That’s very nice of you, Ruben. Is this a service you offer officially?”

“No, I’ve just been speaking to Janet here, who says she doesn’t own a car.”

Will recognizes the made up name as a signal that something he did earlier scared Abigail. _[Too bad they have our address, but how fortunate that he is likely not allowed to offer this… service.]_ “Well, then, after work you can come by. Unfortunately, Alexandras and I will not be home this evening.” _[If he wasn’t fully convinced to come visit ‘Janet’ tonight, he is now.]_

Ruben lights up at the prospect of being alone in a home with this person half his age. “Oh, well then I can help her assemble the bed as well.”

Abigail, of course, knows she’s not the one in danger, but she mentally runs through alternative timelines of this scenario if she wasn’t in the present company. Something rattled her.

The rest of the coordinating conversation is dripping with a tension that Ruben doesn’t at all pick up on.

  
  
  


On their way home, the men don’t ask her what unwanted promises Ruben made; they can guess.

\------*------

A little after 7pm, Ruben buzzes their intercom from downstairs. 

Hannibal and Will look down to the street from the kitchen window and see the man. Hannibal waves at Abigail to respond.

“Hey, I’ll be right down,” she manages, while keeping her eyes staring back at Hannibal.

Will wonders if she’s helped him like this before. 

“It’s just a rolled up mattress and a single box for the frame pieces. We could have taken those in a rented SUV.”

“That is because he is not here to help, Will,” Hannibal flat-lines.

“Abigail, you do not need to be a part of this.” Hannibal puts up a hand to encourage her to not leave. He takes a knife from the block and spins it in his hand to admire it – “a Santoku,” he says to the wrong audience – followed by long, silver shears. Rather than hand either of them to Will, he tugs up his shirt and places them in pockets of a cloth wrap. 

“Chef’s secret, I guess,” Will mumbles.

“Abigail, stay in the building until we’re out of sight and then you can manage to bring those packages up, right? Two trips in the elevator.”

She nods in response.

Hannibal is the only one of the three who doesn’t look nervous - in fact he looks deeper in his element than before, if that was even possible. Like they just watched him take his first drag out of a cigarette after quitting ages ago.

  
  


In the elevator, Abigail flexes her hand and rocks up and down on the balls of her toes, looking borderline thrilled on top of the currents of anxiety.

_[There are no doves in this home.]_ Will reminds himself.

  
  
  


“Hello, Ruben,” Will starts, after opening the front door of the building.

“Oh,” the man stutters, trying not to look so visibly upset by his foiled plans for predation, “I didn’t know you two would be here.”

Hannibal steps in front of Will and places a steadying but no doubt unsettling hand on Ruben’s shoulder. “Where is your truck, Ruben?”

“It’s, uh, it’s just here,” he almost whispers, realizing that disappointed embarrassment was not the emotion he should be feeling right now.

“Shall we take a drive somewhere?” Hannibal is outstandingly chipper under a patronizing frown, giving him the air of a kindergarten teacher pretending to mourn a scraped elbow. He holds out a hand and Ruben fumbles to pass him the keys. “Get in.”

Knowing the dangers of an untied man afraid, Will wordlessly joins Ruben in the backseat to prevent leaps to freedom or rash stranglings. Hannibal nods at the choice and climbs into the driver’s seat.

They head north for about 20 minutes, now with a fully set sun. Will passively pictures Abigail at home, taking a screwdriver to the plastic wrapping of the mattress, while wishing it was Ruben’s chest. Now, with growing understanding of himself, Will can see why making her into an apprentice could have actually helped her better process her life. To demonize the nature of a person is to ask them to self-disown, which would be dangerous. _[Splinters from going against the grain.]_

  
  
  


When Hannibal pulls the truck to a stop, he takes the keys out of the ignition but leaves the headlights on, leaving them to shine out over a sand-covered cement lot by a mountain lake.

  
  
  


Will beckons the man out to stand on the sandy cement and truly doesn’t know the rest of Hannibal’s methods well enough to predict what he’ll do.

Ruben is under no illusion he will end the night healthy, but he’s still whipping his eyes around to take inventory of the muscle and weapon threats, pausing at Hannibal, who has started to remove his shirt. Even Will is confused about that one until Hannibal pulls a few rolled up black plastic storage bags out of the back of his knife-holster, and Will pieces together that this is likely more of a concealable utility belt he uses on occasion. He makes a mental note to ask him if it was custom-made.

Somehow, the mystery of rolled plastic on the hood of his car and the exposed hilts of weapons is not enough to prevent Ruben from speaking. “Is this about Janet? I wasn’t going to do anything to her!”

Will doesn’t look at Hannibal for permission before moving. He lands a hard jab into Ruben’s diaphragm. The man’s lack of preparation causes him to dry heave dramatically. “Do you do that a lot? Take furniture to their house after hours? Wait ‘til your boss doesn’t see? Pray that they don’t suspect a thing when they invite you up?”

“I’ve never done that befo–”

Will punches him in the throat. “Bullshit.”

  
  


The man gasps and chokes, trying to decide what part of himself to defensively grip at. He tries to lie again, despite knowing how unconvincing the last one came across, but the rasping pushes against the urge. 

_[Trauma to the larynx.]_

Will puts out his hand to Hannibal, in a silent request for the kitchen knife.

Hannibal takes it out to give to him with a devious smile. “ _How quick the jailed up flavor ran free.”_

Will takes the knife, but his face doesn’t change from its jaw-jutting feral stare. He puts the tip of the knife close to Ruben’s eye. “Tell me what you’ve done.”

Ruben tries to speak through his rasp, with pathetically fearful eyes. “I would g-g-go to–”

There’s no need for the rest. Will and Hannibal both know the song of an admission from the sound of its first note. Will drops the knife in the sand and slams his boot against the man’s kneecaps until his cracks and thud join the sound of the knife’s clatter on the ground. Will pummels his head, waiting less for the fading of signs of life and more for the fading of his need to _keep hitting,_ which comes way after the disappearance of the first. It was one particular slam of his skull against the cement that did it.

When Will stands, Hannibal waits a moment before dragging Ruben across the sand, which leaves a very insignificant and easily swept away blood trail. He replaces the bloodless knife in his belt and removes his shears to begin the comparably tender task of separating skin from tendon and muscle. In a significantly off-tone form, Hannibal gives Will a nod with pursed lips, indicating the plastic bags.

Will obliges. “Do you ever kill just to make people dead? Not to eat them or transform them?”

“Yes.”

“So, you didn’t take a break, did you?” Will pauses his sand-kicking to look squarely at him. “During the Ripper’s quiet years?”

But Hannibal doesn’t look up from his cuts. “No. I was just… quieter.”

“Weren’t feeling very playful?”

“I was not. Fortunately, I’m well practiced in not getting caught.”

Will looks a little solemn at the implications. “And will that elusiveness carry over to us, or is it just reserved for Hannibal Lecter?”

“If we ever separate it would be for your protection, not my own.” He bags only the stomach and kidneys.

“Would I trust you to come back?”

Hannibal rises to standing. “Oh, I will always come back to you.” They share a smile-less smile. And, only a few seconds later, he takes Ruben’s shoes off and simply pushes his body off the ledge to splash in the water. 

  
  
  


They make quick work of redressing Hannibal, staging the truck much closer to the city, though still by a lake, and leaving his boots right at the edge of the short cliffside. It will look like a tragically miscalculated dive rather than a body dump.

Now much closer to home, Hannibal and Will opt to walk the rest of the way, with the only evidence of their outing sitting in a double wrapped bag that hangs from Hannibal’s wrist like the groceries they are. 

When Will is quiet for a long period of the walk, Hannibal turns to softly speak. “Having the power of choice is not some indication that it is a test of the heavens to do the right thing. The power to choose is just that. Having multiple options.”

Will doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t brush off the statement either.

Hannibal continues. “Humans could have everything wrong. Does that upset you? Killing isn’t the pride, Will; morality is the pride.”

  
  
  


\------*------

A distant voice calls from the bedroom when they open the door. “Welcome back.” She sounds tired and relieved.

Moments after removing his shoes, Hannibal beelines to the sink to wash the meat in a colander.

Will watches the decisive movements, _[maybe an M.O. or maybe I don’t know a lot about cooking]_ before turning to go shower and change.

  
  
  
  


By the time Will resurfaces from the room, Hannibal is stowing sliced organs in the fridge while Abigail stands at the sink, washing several knives.

Hannibal beams at Will and takes his place in the shower. Will initially frowns at the sight, realizing he probably would frown at the idea of eating strictly the internal organs of any animal. _[Never been much for offal, but I’ll mention that at a later date.]_

“Did you get far with your bed?”

Abigail rolls her eyes. “No, I screwed the headboard on backwards so I had to start over. It’s all rubble on the floor in there right now.”

Will laughs at the strong flood of familiarity after such a bizarre evening. He flicks his head to the room, miming that he’ll give it a try. Of all nights to have his first guiltless and distinctly paternal moment, this one is quite jarring. And then it isn’t.

  
  
  
  
  
  


That night, they have stir fry, made fattier and saltier than Hannibal’s meals tend to be, likely as a courtesy to the source-skeptical audience.

Hannibal puts down his fork. “Do you both like it here? I know it’s early to tell.”

They nod with mouthfuls.

“Well, good.” He laughs and gathers a few other endorsements from that response.

Will stays a little silent during dinner, but he enjoys listening to the others discuss the university and future day trips.

  
  


\------*------

  
  


Hannibal lays a warm hand on Will’s nape, trying to calm him before they settle fully into bed. “That was a beautiful thing you did tonight. Your wrath for blood. I hoped to collaborate, but I couldn’t look away.”

“Well, I… couldn’t stop.” Will looks down at his deceptively clean hands. There’s evidence of a brawl, yes, but not of any dying stranger’s anguish.

“Is that how you feel? Out of control?” He asks it into his temple.

“Yes!” Will practically screams at the ceiling. “Always. Don’t you?”

“Hardly ever.” He kisses him on the top of his head.

_[Of course the neurotic man has a need for control, to make things beautiful, perfect. All traits of a man born into a chaos.]_

Will rises to standing and walks over to run his hands along the spines of the books, all brown, gold, and forest green. “I’d describe my childhood as… glum. But you might have already extrapolated to that from what I’ve told you.” He turns to look at Hannibal, still seated on the bed. “Would you ever tell me more about yours?”

Hannibal looks immediately uncomfortable. “It is my… own scorched earth. For both of our sake, I won’t tell you the stories, but if you worry that it ruins me every day, it doesn’t.”

“I suppose we will stay quiet on our histories then. _‘Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart…_ ” Will quotes while he tugs out a Kierkegaard collection, “ _if it is pulled out I shall die._ ” 

Hannibal furrows his brow at the idea. “Kierkegaard was a man of trauma diaries. You’d like to stay quiet on ourselves but never privately forget?”

Will thinks for a long moment and shakes out a soft voice. “I am… somehow all of my memories and imagined futures all at once. Everything I am near and far from all at once. To be one I have to be the other.”

“So what of our _shared_ histories? Will we die if that barb is removed?” Hannibal smirks at Will’s poetics, though he sits and watches him rigidly.

Will hums, considering the answer. “Not a question worth asking. We’d have to resolve to pull the barb from the other.”

“See what might happen.”

  
  
  
  


Will steps toward Hannibal and sits beside him again slowly. “I… want to be who I am.”

_[I submit to our mutual obsession.]_

_[I will chew up our trespasses for this life with you.]_

The piece he says aloud is enough of a confession. Not a happiness, but a thorough satisfaction. Which might be better. Certainly rooted deeper in the earth than joy ever is.

  
  


He is pulled into the other man’s arms, a big hand coming to cup the back of his head.

Not so long ago, by some cosmic twist, they stumbled across stories. As though they are the Greek and Roman tellings of the same mythology. Statued idols accidentally sorted to the same wing of a museum.

They both mentally shudder at the thought of not having each other. How long they would be alone and stubbornly shrouded all the way to the corpse. How arid the soil would be, how unflowered the grave.

They both question if it truly ever was ‘easier’ to be their own things.

  
  
  


\------*------

Only a few nights later, Hannibal can finally gift them their new life here.

“Here you are. Peter Soulis, 45 and Elise Soulis, 20. My husband and my daughter, born in Toronto but now with Lithuanian passports issued in Vilnius four years ago. You will be able to claim benefits by relation as I’m a citizen of Norway.”

Abigail grabs hers like it’s a birthday present. “What were our original last names?”

“Unfortunately, the techs haven’t coordinated paper trails that extend back to your alleged life in Canada, but they will sow more extensively if I ask. Forgery takes a lot of time. It’s better that you two have foreign, and thus less easily verified, identities as synthetic papers can become muddy if you can be easily found - or not found - in your resident country’s systems. I, however, have been Alexandras for many years and in various institutions, so my face is well-woven.” He moves to locate the bottle of wine he opened a few minutes ago. “Which is hugely beneficial for you both.”

“How long can we be these people?” Abigail asks, unashamed of her excitement.

“I wouldn’t like you to leave until you’ve completed your education. If that requires Alexandras and Peter to go away for a while, then that is what we’ll do. If we truly make a home here and we are careful, we can hold on tight to it all.”

Will scoots his glass toward Hannibal to be filled. “A life not as precarious as it feels?”

“No, certainly not.”

  
  


The cold air from outside seeps through the windows and spills across the wooden floors, but they all sleep well. All looking forward to themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is the final chapter :(( but i think it will be satisfying  
> thank you for all your sweet comments!


	10. Quiets

“No.”

“A compromise.” 

“No, absolutely not.”

Shaken by the local news reporting a suspicious disappearance of a local interior store worker, Will made a stop after the bookstore this morning and surprised Hannibal with red frame glasses – which he thinks are not nearly as gaudy as the man is making them out to be.

Hannibal finally sits all the way up in bed and closes his book in exasperation. “Do I strike you as _this_ eccentric?”

Biting back the first response that comes to mind, Will supplies, “they’re… flashy, yes, but people will see these and expect you to be rich and cultured.” He tacks on because he has to, “in case you didn’t have access to the rest of your wardrobe that day.”

The other man’s mouth hangs open in disbelief, unsure yet if Will is actually playful enough for this to be a joke. Unfortunately, he knows he isn’t.

Will runs a very caffeinated hand back through relaxed ashy strands. “I’m also going to cut your hair.”

“Will Graham. Does my beauty mean nothing to you?”

Unknowingly ripping off another vanity band-aid, Will offers, “I’m going to cut mine as well.”

“Bite your tongue.” Hannibal looks affronted now, but he gently takes the glasses and sets them on top of his book on the nightstand, clearly agreeing to the fashion misstep if it means a calmer bundle of nerves as a bedfellow.

Will scratches his own face. “But I’ll grow my beard out instead. Is that a good halfway point?”

Hannibal replaces the hand there. “Pjotr Kropotkin?”

Will barks a laugh. “I was imagining more along the lines of Nobel. If you had your heart set on the Kropotkin styling, you could try it for yourself.”

“The glasses are enough of an obscurity for my features, I think.” He tugs Will into the warm bed despite his clothes made frosty by the outdoors, and rumbles, “would you like to do something very frowned upon?”

 _[As long as I’m not the one frowning.]_ “What did you have in mind?” Will deadpans, searching everywhere on his face for the answer but his eyes.

  
  
  


*

  
  


The rest of the early morning in the empty apartment rolls on with the smell of linens and coffee beans. Of chilled air and bookshelves and breath. 

  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  
  


This train ride is shorter than the one they took across Ireland. A little gloomier, too. Gray mornings are notorious for giving space to question happiness. To covet melancholy if it helps all your “why” questions seem more founded in sad truths. Will has always felt as though he shouldn’t look directly at questions of dread when he’s grounded in the knowledge that, like tendon and bone, questioning and seeking an escape are a necessary pairing. But today, when the clouds ask for the questioning, he acknowledges to himself that… he has no questions. Concerns, curiosities, yes, but he can stomach plenty of uncertainties. After all the rock beatings his mind has taken, he has not come out bloodied, but completely clean, without his heavy husk.

Abigail, who had woken up early to make an interview at the university, falls asleep on Will’s shoulder. It stings of pride and goodness. _[I can’t watch this girl hurt anymore. How much her nostalgia must smell of blood.]_ He sits opposite Hannibal (who also has a misty-eyed paternal gleam) in their booth and scoots his hand to mirror the other’s on the table. Both hands aged and weathered beside the other, both delicate enough for instruments and strong enough for violence. Hannibal’s with extra freckles and Will’s with healing scars. 

He can see the other man thinking. A glance to his eyes then back at the water, to the eyes to the water.

Hannibal whispers so as to not wake Abigail, “your irises are a bit like a glacier lake.”

Will grins and looks out the window, embarrassed that he finds that charming. _[This man. My life now. If warmth had a scent.]_

  
  
  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


When they arrive at the island that’s, as Hannibal said, just an hour outside of the city but without any hint that it is, all three of them are met with a vastness that is as jarring as it is grounding. 

This view of the North Sea takes away any illusion a person could have of their grandeur. Which is precisely what self-discovery is. 

It’s all rocks and birds and boats that are tied with the trust of neighbors, air that’s singing of the town’s burning wood. He wonders if it sings like that always.

“It’s lovely,” he says to the two of them. They walk in step with each other, the sound of six feet and shifting rocks falling in with every other bit of the scene.

Will finds he doesn’t need the quiet as much as he used to. Maybe to be alive is to never be quiet. _[I remind them I am here to know that this year, this month, I was someone, something that made a sound when it thought.]_

  
  


Hannibal looks over, fondly, acknowledging the effort. “I’m glad to see you’re growing to like the colder climate.”

Will laughs breathily. “Maybe it was Quantico that made me bittered to Virginia.”

“I’d say so.”

The gravel becomes the backdrop for Abigail’s questions about the island and, strangely, fish. _[Probably trying to play to the strengths of both of her guardians.]_

Will wonders if enjoying life with a brain such as his would dirty a person. If one day he comprehends completely that there is no shame he owes the universe, maybe then he could commit, however begrudgingly, to his living and breathing self. 

  
  
  
  
  


\------*------

  
  


With the sun setting, they make their way down to a rocky beach. Some snow paints the gravel path to the shore, and only Abigail braves it, though wobbling a little on the larger slick stones.

  
  


“Perhaps in this area, maybe on that long stretch of road we passed by, we can find a home. We will have a pack of dogs. Abigail - she will stay in the city and build her life there, as she must, and we will build ours here. As we… have the freedom to do.” Hannibal speaks slowly and watches his face closely. He knows Will’s thoughts to be deafening and tumultuous and he makes room for that.

  
  


_[He wants me here. He wants to be where I am.]_ Will sees it. They don’t crave each other as two men joined taut by tethers built of similar passions; they themselves are there in those fibers. 

He stares at the mental image of Hannibal in a knit cap, beside a collection of mismatched green bottles, leashes hung on door hooks - expecting him not to fit - but Hannibal slides right into his world in the way any brilliant outsider adapts to something fascinating. Will wonders if he’d fit into that made up place without Hannibal as part of the backdrop now. Probably not. _[Whenever I allow myself comfort, I allow myself desires, which are often uncomfortable.]_

_[I wield a mallet that I wish I did not have. I can not put it down. It is my brain. I built a cage with three walls and called myself trapped.]_

Will nods. A life filled with the sounds of geese and grebes, that smells of firewood. _[Yes. There’s a longer list but the rest of it is more implicit than I let him think it is.]_

  
  


He looks up at the sky darkening behind gray clouds. It still seems beautiful, complex, in all its facets. “You’ve mentioned your belief that no one watches. Do you believe in creation? In a creator?”

The other man waits a beat while he thinks. Preparing for an appropriately weighted thought. “This is then with the assumptive joining of God and creator. Evolution has made us all a creator, even if just in a sentence. The knowledge that I made more for the earth. In the long list of what exists, there are sentences which only I have spoken, a portrait only I drew of your own temporary face. My life is the creation of a universe. Because I am, you are. Just the same, as creators, we can be the tool for someone else’s evolution.”

Will breathes the thought in while it hangs in the air in fog. Deciding that there is no adequate response, he pivots. “You’re planning my future selves already?”

The humor isn’t lost on Hannibal. “You have changed me. If I stopped wishing for your evolution can I at least count on your effects on me?”

“I hope I affect you in less exhausting ways.” An eye roll.

“I’m so deeply fascinated by you. Moved by you. And I hope the feeling is mutual. Because I’d like to have you here.”

“Glad I could be of service for your life of fascination.”

“And of companionship.” Hannibal hums this, trying to mask shyness, uncertainty. The sense that he will always have to convince Will to stay with him.

“You make it sound profanely simple.” A toothy chuckle. From one or both of them.

They meet gentle eyes and Hannibal speaks softly through a smile, “is it not? Life and bodies and poetry. I want for little else.”

They look down toward the shoreline, where Abigail looks out at the water as though she’s experiencing her private moment of reverence there. She seems so youthful. She _is_ so youthful. But she’s been made to deal with a very unkind world. By cosmic gift, she is one for calluses and forward motion.

Will breaks their shared thoughts, “you and Abigail will both have the university. What will I do here?”

“Well, I’d imagine you have enough intellectual stimulation for a lifetime just inside your brain. Probably enough social stimulation there, too.” He lifts a teasing brow, although colored in sympathy. “You can build. Docent at the museum. Sell what you catch. Anything and everything you like.”

“Always something new? Never a chance to bloom where planted,” Will huffs at the ground.

“You are a creature of habit but nothing quite so green as to have roots to put into the earth.”

He’s right. Will, as a child, often pictured land as interruption to the sea, the world as just ocean with a few exceptions. Home is never going to be a single place. “No, maybe not green at all.”

  
  
  


“With all of those trades, you will be the ‘everything man’ to the neighborhood. And they’ll secretly wonder why you have such an ugly husband.” Hannibal indicates his bright framed glasses and pouts. 

“Well, of course they’ll be curious. They will probably be too polite to outright ask.”

Will’s comment is met with a disapproving sideways grin, which fades a little into a different kind of solemn happiness. The other man’s bottom lip hangs open while he forms the words. “One wonders if this is where we will be buried.”

  
  


“Do you consider that in every place you go or just your future real estate holdings?” Will quips, though not entirely sure of what he’s mocking.

Hannibal turns toward him but doesn’t look him directly in the eyes. A welcome choice. “Perhaps, as of late, I wonder the same in every place I go with you.”

Will realizes. All of the nerves that had long felt tangled and mismatched would not be untangled in love, but made to feel right and correct and sane. And that’s why he is here. The thought feels shockingly close to the way a flower petal feels between fingertips: cool and gentle beyond reason, waiting for a jaggedness that isn’t there. In a moment, the beach’s frigid air starts getting on top of him and he fails to suppress a bodily shiver. From the distance, he can see Abigail begin to close in on herself as well and turn around.

  
  


With a strong arm and leather-gloved hand, Hannibal pulls Will into a half embrace. He speaks into the top of his forehead. “Living out in nature is your own long standing form of civil disobedience. Where you can see your humanity as just another rustling of leaves. Self-seclusion as an illusion of self-control.” While Abigail approaches, smiling through her own foggy breath, Hannibal continues and includes her in the moment. “That said, in our faraway home, we can become lost cities. We, beautiful and hunted, never stop existing. To be what we ever were: our own machines. All we are. The thinking and the doing.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


End file.
